Michigan U.S. Representative Mike Rogers has always been a captive of moneyed lobbyists -- he was responsible while a state legislator for rolling back the state's building energy efficiency standards to the caveman era -- but now he's about to do even more damage to the public interest.
The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bill that would pre-empt all state food safety regulations that are more stringent than federal standards.
But critics of the measure — including state departments of agriculture, state food and drug officials, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the California attorney general and a long list of consumer advocacy groups — say it would gut all state regulations, including food safety investigations and sanitation standards for restaurants. In some instances, they say, the bill would replace regulations with nothing because there are no federal standards.
The bill, introduced by Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, has 226 co-sponsors from both parties. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved it, largely along party lines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/politics/01food.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Sanitation standards for restaurants? At one point the radical right's idea was to strangle government in its crib; now the idea is to gag us.
The state "tolerances" that could be wiped out by this bill include many tolerances for environmental chemicals.
Posted by Dave at March 2, 2006 07:40 AM