Action Alert -- Preserve Freedom of Choice
Local and State Food Safety and Label Laws Under Attack
Urgent Action - Stop the Rollback of State Food Safety and Labeling Laws!
| The Bush administration is trying to grab more power and less accountability for the federal government. There is a bill in Congress that would destroy state and local food safety and labelling laws. Instead, all Americans would be forced to have only a single (very low) standard of safety, and changes could be made only by the federal government, which is notoriously corrupt, and accessible only to big corporate lobbyists. We are reprinting an ACTION ALERT from the Center for Food Safety here, and we urge you to participate. If you want science, and local democracy, to have any voice in deciding what's safe or dangerous, then please help by opposing bill HR 4167. Thank you! |
A bill is pending in the United States House of Representatives that would eliminate dozens of food safety and labeling laws. The bill, H.R. 4167, the National Uniformity for Food Act, does this by stripping away the power of states to regulate food safety, and concentrating all such power in the federal government alone.
This bill is scheduled to hit the House floor for a vote around this Thursday, March 2nd –- please contact your representatives TODAY and urge them to vote NO on HR 4167!
Here is how the bill works. Under the guise of promoting “uniformity” of food safety and labeling laws in the U.S., the bill requires all state food safety laws to be identical to the requirements of the Federal Food and Drug Administration. If the FDA has not passed a regulation on a food threat, then all state regulations on that threat would immediately be voided. And, since the states regulate many food safety issues not covered by the FDA, many food safety laws will be voided and replaced with no law at all. For example, the bill would preempt Alaska’s newly passed law to label genetically engineered fish and California’s Proposition 65, a very effective law that requires labeling of food and consumer products that contain substances known to cause cancer or reproductive harm. It would also threaten state laws governing the safety of milk and shellfish.
The “uniformity” to be achieved by the bill is in many instances the uniform absence of food safety regulations.
Local and state officials are now responsible for 80% of the nation’s food safety enforcement. H.R. 4167 puts a stranglehold on the people most informed about local needs. It is opposed by dozens of environmental health groups, by California’s State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, the Association of Food and Drug Officials, the National Conference of State Legislators and the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.
If this bill passes, not only will hundreds of current state food safety laws face being overturned, future state food safety and labeling initiatives could be impossible to put in place.
There are currently 226 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives to pass the bill in the House, so every letter is needed to ensure that these Representatives understand what a bad bill this is.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE NOW AND URGE THEM TO VOTE NO ON H.R. 4167!
Click here for easy ways to phone or email your Congress representatives.
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Also see: Citizens and Safety Can Defeat Fatcat Lobbyists
Government Opposes Science, Factual Information
GM Food Makers Refuse to Disclose Untested Ingredients to Americans |
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