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UNITE SAFETY AGENCIES, EXECUTIVE URGES

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- The four government agencies responsible for food safety should be consolidated into a single agency that ensures food wholesomeness, the technical director for the Refrigerated Foods Association said at the group's annual meeting here.The trade group official, Marty Mitchell, addressed the meeting in place of Dr. Sanford Miller, dean of graduate students of biomedical science

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- The four government agencies responsible for food safety should be consolidated into a single agency that ensures food wholesomeness, the technical director for the Refrigerated Foods Association said at the group's annual meeting here.

The trade group official, Marty Mitchell, addressed the meeting in place of Dr. Sanford Miller, dean of graduate students of biomedical science at the University of Texas, who was scheduled to talk but was unable to attend. Mitchell said his comments reflected Miller's views.

Because the food industry has "a powerful voice," Mitchell said, "we should go to the president and demand a new food agency, and stop all this nonsense."

Mitchell said the functions currently vested in the four public agencies -- enforcement, by the Food and Drug Administration; commodity promotions, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; pesticide regulation, by the Environmental Protection Agency, and advertising regulation of food by the Federal Trade Commission -- should be assigned to a single entity that safeguards the wholesomeness, rather than simply the safety, of the nation's food supply.

"Food wholesomeness would encompass safety, nutrition and potential adulteration," Mitchell explained.

He said the existing agencies have difficulty reaching decisions, tend to concentrate on less important issues and make increasing use of nonscientific issues in making decisions. Mitchell also said future risk assessment may require an analysis of one risk against another to determine which is the lesser threat. "For example, it may be determined that there is some risk in irradiation, but that may be balanced by the worse risk of microbial contamination without irradiation," he said. "So we may have to use risk/risk analysis as the paradigm for future decisions -- to compare the risk of doing one thing vs. the risk of not doing it based on scientific information."

He said all decisions concerning food safety should be based on scientific knowledge, not on enforcement requirements or politics.

Besides serving as technical director for the Refrigerated Foods Association, Mitchell is also head of Certified Analytical Group, Plainview, N.Y.