+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html)
+--- Forum: Law & Ethics (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-105.html)
+--- Thread: Worst regulation ever? Congress mandated "stupid", USDA complied (/thread-10397.html)
Worst regulation ever? Congress mandated "stupid", USDA complied - C C - May 30, 2021
http://www.henrymillermd.org/25419/ready-set-go-for-the-worst-regulation-ever
INTRO: A very bad regulation is coming. Here's the short of it. In 2016 Congress passed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law. That law directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promulgate regulations for the mandatory labeling of "bioengineered" (or "genetically engineered") foods for human consumption.
Consequently, the USDA issued the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standards (NBFDS) in December 2018. Although those regulations became effective in February 2019, the USDA allowed food manufacturers (the regulated entities) until Jan. 1, 2022, to come into full compliance. As we noted in the Wall Street Journal back in 2019, the clock has been and is ticking.
Unfortunately, these regulations are in the worst traditions of government meddling. In its statutory language, Congress explicitly stated that the mandatory disclosure has nothing to do with food safety or consumer health, thus acknowledging what the scientific community and even the Food and Drug Administration has said consistently for thirty years: Bioengineered, or genetically engineered, foods do not pose any unique health, or environmental risks.
Moreover, precisely because those products do not raise such concerns, Congress did not assign the task of writing regulations to regulators at the FDA or USDA, but rather to the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA-AMS), underlining the fact that the exercise is marketing, pure and simple. In its narrative accompanying the regulations, AMS forthrightly admitted, "The NBFDS is not expected to have any benefits for human health or the environment." Nor does the regulation assert other benefits of any kind to consumers.
What elevates the rule from an irritant to an outrage are USDA's own admissions about its costs, which will "range from $569 million to $3.9 billion for the first year." Thereafter, there will be additional costs annually ("in perpetuity," as the rule says) of "$68 million to $234 million at a three percent discount rate and $91 million to $391 million at a seven percent discount rate." And those estimates don't take into consideration the many thousands of hours federal employees will spend fine-tuning, implementing, and enforcing the rule... (MORE)