by Gary Jay Kushner
How will the Nov. 8 elections affect regulations that pertain to the meat industry?
"Happy days are here again?"
"No holds barred?"
"Caveat emptor?"
Not exactly. But a new era has dawned on Capitol Hill, and the meat industry can win if it is smart.
Voters rejected the status quo, and they told Congress and the Clinton administration to become more responsible and more productive when they put Republicans in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.
Yes, many would agree that the voters were also rejecting big government, but they were not rejecting all government. That's an important distinction.
With a more conservative Congress, and a president hoping to be re-elected in 1996, there will certainly be more careful, more constrained legislation and regulation. This is good news.
Addressing the problems
But there are also real problems that need to be addressed, some going to the heart of meat production, processing and distribution. Everybody now knows that it should not be ignored.
The challenge for the meat industry will be to isolate the problems, identify realistic and effective solutions, and garner the forces on Capitol Hill to push for appropriate governmental intervention.
When Clinton took office, he claimed to be a New Democrat. Most people, at least swing voters who helped carry him into the White House, believed this meant more regulation than the previous 12 years (although regulation of the food industry during the Reagan and Bush era was more intense than most people realized), but a whole lot less than is typical of Democrats.
"It's the economy, stupid"-remember? Not true. The Clinton administration's first two years in office began with FDA seizing orange juice because it was allegedly mislabeled as "fresh" (as if anyone really cares), and ended with an ineffective and unnecessary, but very costly and potentially damaging, ground beef sampling program.
In between were several aggressive regulatory initiatives and legislative grabs for broader enforcement power. In fact, when Congress adjourned in October, there was a threat that legislation dramatically expanding USDA's regulatory breadth and authority would be enacted. Fortunately, time ran out.
The mantle is passed
With a new Congress comes new leadership. Of particular significance, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), not Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), will chair the Senate Agriculture Committee.
In the House, the Agriculture Committee will now be chaired by Rep. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), a long-time industry ally.
Although Rep. Charles Stenholm (D-Texas), who chaired a powerful House agriculture subcommittee having jurisdiction over USDA, always had an open door to industry, he also joined Sen. Thomas Daschle (D-Iowa) in sponsoring the objectionable Pathogen Reduction Act. Stenholm will likely be replaced by Rep. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.)
Daschle won't be majority leader, as he had hoped; and Stenholm has lost his subcommittee post, but he is still an important member of the committee. Both Stenholm and Roberts had originally sponsored respectable proposals designed to enhance the scientific basis of meat and poultry inspection.
Perhaps Stenholm will again work closely with Roberts as he had in the past toward moderate reform of the inspection system.
The changes in Congress are not only in the agriculture committees. The powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), and the liberal chairman of that committee's Health and Environment Subcommittee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), are also now in the minority.
The Commerce Committee has had jurisdiction over FDA, as well as a variety of food safety issues affecting meat processing.
Not only will the committee now be chaired by Thomas Bliley (R-Va.), who sponsored industry-supported food safety legislation last year, but food inspection jurisdiction is expected to be consolidated in the agriculture committee.
In large part, the regulatory intensity experienced by the food industry during the past two years has come from a combination of penned-up enthusiasm by activists appointed as agency heads by the Clinton administration, who felt they had little access to the White House during the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Another factor was that Congress forgot the electorate's 1992 message.
What it means
But President Clinton is smart and savvy. Perhaps the next two years will be different. If not, expect gridlock.
This does not mean deregulation. There are food safety concerns that everyone wants to address.
But change is in the air and it is about time. Industry should not see the change in Congress as a way to stop the wheels of government, but rather as a time to seize the initiative-determine what aspects of existing laws and regulations do not work and how they can be made more effective and more efficient. But the meat industry should proceed while it can because no one can predict what 1996 will bring.