Taking ACUS to Task for Industry Bias in 'International Regulatory Cooperation' Project

In late 2011, a little known but surprisingly influential independent federal agency called the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) conducted a research project on "International Regulatory Cooperation" (IRC), culminating in a set of recommendations to U.S. agencies. In a letter sent yesterday (March 21), CPR Member Scholars Rena Steinzor and Thomas McGarity, and I urge ACUS Chairman Paul Verkuil to look back over the project's many flaws, which reflect - in both process and substance - ACUS's pervasive bias toward the views of regulated industries. What exactly is meant by "international regulatory cooperation"? As we write: The principal objective of IRC is to "harmonize" U.S. regulatory standards with those of other countries or international standard-setting organizations. .... There is always a danger that such harmonization efforts will become a deregulatory "race to the bottom" in which nations, at the urging of business groups, converge on the least protective standard in the interest of maximizing international trade. A number of current proposals (described in an attachment to the letter) illustrate how "harmonization" efforts can significantly reduce health, safety, or environmental protections. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed establishing "import tolerances" for residues of unapproved animal drugs in foods shipped to the United States. Instead of its normally rigorous drug approval process, the FDA would essentially rely on a foreign government's approval of the drug in question, conducting a much less comprehensive review before signing off on the wholesale importation of foods containing that residue. The FDA would in many cases borrow the "maximum residue limits" established by the Codex Alimentarius, an international standard-setting body heavily influenced by industry groups. Since much of the food we eat in the United States is imported (15 percent of all our food, 91 percent of our seafood, 61 percent of our honey, and 8 percent of our red meat), the presence of unapproved drug residues could expose Americans to much higher risks of allergic reactions, cancer, and other serious health problems.