Peace of mind about pesticides.

In August President Clinton continued his campaign of using federal action to protect food safety when he signed into law an overhaul of the legislation that sets permissible levels for pesticide residues in foods. The legislation (P.L. 104-170), known as the Food Quality Protection Act, supplants sections of both the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). The new act received support from a number of environmental, public health, industry, and agricultural groups and was passed nearly unanimously by Congress. Clinton said the new Food Quality Protection Act was the culmination of previous efforts to ensure the safety of American food and water. Less than a month earlier, the president had announced reforms of the federal safety rules governing meat and poultry, replacing a 90-year-old inspection program based on sight, touch, and smell with one based on assessment of microbial contamination. In December 1995, the Food and Drug Administration took aim at the seafood industry, revamping rules governing how fish processors should protect the public health. Another step to safety. The new Food Quality Protec federal rules for food safety including standards for h residues. The main effect of the latest legislation will be to attack regulatory inconsistencies in the two major pesticide statutes. Under the new law, the patchwork of standards included in the FFDCA and FIFRA will be replaced by the requirement that pesticide residue levels in food be "safe," defined as "a reasonable certainty that no harm will result from aggregate exposure." It is hoped that this approach will keep problems like the FFDCA's "Delaney paradox" from arising. Under the Delaney clause, cancer-causing agents were kept out of foods completely if the agent would be more concentrated in the processed food than in the raw agricultural commodity. Paradoxically, such pesticides were sometimes .replaced by more dangerous though noncarcinogenic chemicals. The new standards will apply equally to all risks, without giving special treatment to cancer risks. Other provisions in the act should impart greater flexibility to the EPA in determining how pesticides may be used. In certain narrow circumstances, for example , the new law allows limits for pesticide residues to be set that do not meet the law's safety standards if it can be shown that the benefits afforded by such an application far outweigh the risks. Specifically, such tolerances will be allowed if the pesticide protects the …