Clinton suggests program to block contaminated food

WASHINGTON - In response to public skittishness over food safety, President Clinton yesterday proposed a new program of standards and inspections aimed at blocking contaminated fruits and vegetables grown overseas from reaching the United States.

During a Rose Garden ceremony, Clinton detailed his plans to ask Congress to authorize the Food and Drug Administration to halt imports of produce from foreign countries that have lower safety requirements or do not permit FDA inspections. The administration will develop new guidelines and monitoring procedures, he said.

"With these efforts, we can make sure that no fruits and vegetables cross our borders, enter our ports, or reach our dinner tables without meeting the same strict standards as those grown here in America," the president said. "Our food safety system is the strongest in the world and that's how it's going to stay."

The plan, the broad outlines of which were released last week, was fashioned to reassure consumers worried by recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that fruits and vegetables will be examined as closely as meat and poultry. The FDA recommended more scrutiny of produce in 1993, but the administration did not act until recent widely publicized incidents raised pressure.

Even as it was being unveiled, the proposal became entangled in the politics of Clinton's "fast-track" free trade proposal. On one side, critics charged the food initiative was a ploy to allay congressional fears that lower trade barriers would make it easier for tainted food from other countries to get into the United States. On the other, industry officials warned the plan could hurt domestic growers if foreign governments retaliate by adopting stricter standards against American products.

"This whole plan of his is pure cosmetics to get fast track passed," Rep. Sherrod Brown, (D-Ohio,) said by telephone from the Mexican border, where he was studying the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). "I don't think anybody in Congress is going to change their vote because of this rather inadequate food safety proposal of the president's."

The Clinton legislation would give the FDA the same kind of power over produce imports that the Agriculture Department has over meat and poultry, officials said. While fruits and vegetables are not the main source of food illnesses, there is evidence that their involvement is growing. Vegetables are involved in about 15 percent of E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks in the United States, three times as much as several years ago.

The administration plans to ask for $24 million for more international inspectors to examine produce suppliers. Clinton asked aides to report back in 90 days with plans to toughen border inspections and aid foreign countries, and in a year with specific standards for growing, processing, shipping and selling produce.

About 38 percent of the fruit and 12 percent of the vegetables consumed by Americans last year came from foreign growers, according to the administration. Officials said they were not responding to any great threat from overseas produce. "We don't see a huge problem out there," Deputy Agriculture Secretary Richard Rominger.

However, some food industry officials said they fear a backlash from foreign governments to Clinton's plan.

"I've seen countries do a lot of things to protect their markets, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see other countries use this to protect their markets if our government isn't careful how they structure this program," said Chris Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, which represents growers of apples, pears and cherries in the Pacific Northwest.

Ralph Nader's Public Citizen called Clinton's plan weak in some elements and counter-productive in others.

Lori Wallach, director of the group's trade section, said the FDA already has the power to seize contaminated fruit and vegetables at the border. Moreover, she said, Clinton's proposal would apply a looser standard than current law - requiring foreign safety standards be equivalent rather than equal to U.S. rules.

"It's a crass political move," she said. "It's about fast track, not food safety."

10-03-97