You can pretty well judge priorities in Washington simply by a matter of speed. If issues sit out there forever without being addressed, the political powers that be don’t really care about them. If they get attended to right away, they must have a certain importance attached. And this isn’t about lip service, but follow-through. [...]

The US Department of Agriculture believes that their budget will tighten. In a letter, USDA head Tom Vilsack tells all employees that “we will have to continue our path of belt tightening.” He indicates that the House’s budget, which keeps defense spending constant, will force cuts on the other discretionary non-defense agencies like USDA, which [...]

In my previous item I mentioned that new regulations to improve the nation’s food safety were threatened by funding cuts. But the candle is being burned at both ends. While regulatory agencies struggle to carry out their mandates with underfunded budgets, the mandates themselves are being curtailed by a White House-led effort to trim regulations. [...]

One of the policy items you hear the Administration tout as part of defending their record is the food safety bill. Food policy experts considered it flawed, but generally a step in the right direction, and the first overhaul of the nation’s food safety system in decades. There’s every reason for the White House to [...]

The House Appropriations Committee released the final 2011 continuing resolution text, which reflects the agreement between Congressional leaders and the President. You can view a summary of the CR and the list of final program cuts. Or, if you’re daring, you can read the full text. First of all, there’s a 0.2% across-the-board cut to [...]

Granted, this is a quote from a consumer, not a scientist, but it accurately conveys the fear from the population over radiation: By scientific standards, the radiation found over the last week in batches of milk on the West Coast was minuscule and, moreover, not dangerous to humans. But the mere mention of any contamination [...]

The locus of fear in Japan has shifted from the Fukushima Daiichi plant (although smoke was seen coming from Unit #3 today) to the produce and other food products coming out of the region. The FDA has banned the imports of milk and fresh produce from around the stricken nuclear power plant, which seems sensible. [...]

While we await the Egyptian Speaker of Parliament, who is apparently about to make an important statement about the government, I wanted to put a quick capper on this story about Dennis Kucinich and his dental issues. The announcement that he was suing a Congressional cafeteria because he bit into an olive pit sparked a [...]

We know about Darrell Issa’s steady stream of investigations. What we didn’t know is how central federal regulations were to that list. In fact, in determining how to proceed on the regulatory aspect of his oversight hearings, he has enlisted the industries themselves to tell him which regulations to jettison. Because there’s nothing corporations do [...]

The Senate continued a mad rush in their fairly productive lame duck session today, passing a food safety bill and filing cloture to end debate on ratification of the new START treaty. The food safety bill was left for dead after the Senate, which passed the bill earlier in the lame duck, mistakenly did not [...]

A couple other things get knocked out when the Senate ditched the omnibus bill last night. The House, when it passed its measure to fund the government, attached the food safety bill to it. That bill had passed both the House and Senate previously, but because of a drafting error, where the Senate didn’t make [...]