Agencies: Up Against the Wall, FDA!

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Nader's Raiders struck again last week. This time their target was the Federal Food and Drug Administration, which they tore apart in what may well be the most devastating critique of a U.S. Government agency ever issued.

The attack took the form of a 293-page report called The Chemical Feast. It was based on a two-year study of the FDA by Consumer Watchdog Ralph Nader and 20 student volunteers, most of them specialists in medicine and law. Their report accused the agency of conspiring with the food industry to defraud consumers and even to endanger their health; FDA regulations, they argued, read like a catalogue of favors to special interests. Specifically, the agency was accused of allowing the sale of "enriched white flour" that is actually stripped of most nutrients, of permitting meat packers to increase the fat content at the expense of protein content in frankfurters and other foods, of letting major manufacturers saturate supermarkets with such heavily advertised "unfoods" as "near-zero nutrition snacks, chemically doused bakery goods and soft drinks."

Although the report gives some grudging credit to HEW Secretary Robert Finch for his banning of cyclamates, it takes the position that the additive should never have been permitted in the first place, and notes that studies of its potentially harmful effects had been available to the FDA for nearly 20 years. As an example of the FDA's cozy relationship with the food industry, the report cites an agency order that allowed soft-drink bottlers to exclude the listing of caffeine from the number of ingredients that had been added to their beverages.

Long-winded as well as angry in tone, the report occasionally strikes out with rhetorical inaccuracy—as when it seems to put most of the blame on the FDA for the fact that the American infant-mortality rate, once fifth lowest in the world, is now 13th lowest. But many of its points are soundly made. While placing a large share of the blame on practices of the food industry, Nader's Raiders hit hard at the FDA for frittering away its limited resources on relatively harmless quacks while letting major corporations go virtually unregulated. They note that the agency has only two men enforcing the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1967, whereas proper enforcement could save consumers between $1 billion and $10 billion annually. They also suggest that the FDA do more of its own studies on food additives instead of relying on reports compiled by industry-dependent scientists.

Well aware of the report's general contents for several weeks, the FDA made a swift response. Just two days after its release, the agency announced plans to revoke thousands of food additives previously declared safe under its old sanctioning procedures.