03/15/07 Bureaucracy condensed

Bureaucracy Condensed One government agency to take the place of twelve other government agencies? I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be back in one minute to tell you about the plan. A Center for Science in the Public Interest "Newsroom" bulletin related that Senators Richard Durbin and Rosa DeLauro have introduced legislation that would put all food safety responsibilities under a single new Food Safety Administration. Right now approximately twelve federal agencies monitor, inspect and label food products for safety. To add to the confusion one agency regulates chickens while another regulates eggs. Cows and milk are checked by different agencies. The FDA oversees cheese pizza and inspects cheese pizza processors on an irregular basis. The USDA has jurisdiction over pepperoni pizza and inspects those processors daily. The new Safe Food Act, if passed, would consolidate these responsibilities and also give this new agency recall authority and trace back provisions and require more frequent inspections of the food processing and producing chains. The new act would eliminate unbalanced funding such as USDA getting a proposed $270 million increase to regulate 20 percent of the U.S. food supply, while the FDA regulates 80 percent of the same supply and is budgeted to receive $10.6 million new dollars. A downside I see is the statement that the Food Safety Administration would be similar to the Environmental Protection Agency. Oh, oh that's an agency we know regulates with very little common sense. I'm Jeff Keane.