Washington - President Bill Clinton urged Congress to adopt legislation that would send Food and Drug Administration inspectors into foreign countries to halt imports of unsafe fruits and vegetables.
The White House has pressed for several food-safety initiatives during the past two years, calling for Congress to give regulators the power to recall tainted meat, to spend more on research into foodborne illness and to develop guidelines for good agricultural practices.
The food-safety issue has been politically popular among women voters and consumer groups, especially since the August 1997 record 25-million-pound recall of tainted hamburger and several outbreaks of cyclospora, E. coli, salmonella and other diseases from bad fruit.
Imports account for about 40 percent of the fruit and vegetables eaten by Americans.
"Any food that does not meet clear and strict standards should not come into the United States. It's that simple," Clinton said at a White House event. "The farmer who grows these things no longer lives down the road from you, he may live across the ocean or around the world."
Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who attended the event, said she would introduce a Senate bill this week to give the FDA greater power to stop any food imports suspected of not meeting U.S. safety standards.
Congress needs "to upgrade the food safety standards, particularly in our own hemisphere," Mikulski said.
The legislation, introduced in the House of Representatives several weeks ago, was widely viewed as the only food-safety measure with a good chance of being passed by Congress during this year's short legislative session.
The administration's bill to expand U.S. Agriculture Department authority to order mandatory recalls of meat and poultry has little support.
"The FDA has the authority to stop food at borders but they can't go into foreign countries to check if the water is clean or if the local government is enforcing sanitation standards," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, head of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Less than 2 percent of shipments of imported fruit and vegetables are inspected by the FDA.
By contrast, the USDA has the power to approve a foreign country's meat and poultry production program and then send U.S. inspectors to check each plant before allowing imports.
The FDA regulates fruit, vegetables and other processed foods, while the USDA has authority over meat and poultry.
But some food-industry groups criticized the legislation as unnecessary given the FDA's current powers, and an insult to trading partners who may retaliate with non-tariff trade barriers or reciprocal inspection standards.
"Food-safety legislation should proceed on the basis of real science, not political science," said Kelly Johnston, executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association. "The focus of our nation's food-safety activities should be on real risk, not politics."
The Clinton administration's fiscal 1999 budget request proposed an extra $101 million for food-safety initiatives, including nearly $25 million to hire more FDA inspectors.
Clinton also took credit for modernizing U.S. meat inspection procedures in January. The new method requires companies to monitor key steps during processing, which are reviewed by federal meat inspectors.
"I was literally stunned when I came here to find out that we were inspecting meat in the United States in the same way we had inspected it since 1910 and in the same way that dogs inspect it today -- by smelling it and touching it," he said.
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