The Gourmet holiday issue, overwhelmingly dominated by cookie recipes and gift guides, also contains an interestingly off-message piece titled “Your Ignorance, Their Bliss.”
The story has a relatively simple point: The Food and Drug Administration, which has been charged in recent years with protecting the national food supply against acts of terrorism, may soon also need to take over the duties of food labeling and standards from individual states.
The National Uniformity for Food Actsponsored by, surprise, surprise, the food industrywould replace stronger state food labeling and safety standards with weaker, federally mandated rules. Moreover, the rules would need to be researched and imposed by an agency whose resources have been increasingly cut back, even as its duties have expanded.
A chart run with the piece tells the story of the incredible shrinking FDA in a hurry:
BUDGET
2003: $47.6 million
2006: $30 million
2007: $25 millionFULL-TIME EMPLOYEES
2003: 950
2006: 881
2007: 817
Government thriftiness is swell, but it’s hard not to wish that costs had been cut another waylike, say, scrapping a couple spare nuclear weapons. We got lots!
