In January of this year, the Food & Drug Administration proposed a rule on produce safety, as required by the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The rule would establish comprehensive standards designed to prevent foodborne illnesses linked to fruits, vegetables, and nuts—like the ongoing Cyclospora outbreak that has sickened 630 people so far, or the 159 cases of Hepatitis A caused by imported pomegranate seeds.

Sofie Miller and Cassidy West, two analysts from the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center (RSC) recently filed a comment on the FDA’s proposal, recommending a number of changes that would leave gaping holes in the rule’s protections. (A little background: the RSC was founded in 2009 with an initial grant from the right-leaning, anti-regulation Searle Freedom Trust, although that fact is no longer disclosed on their website, nor do the commenters explain which—if any—stakeholders they …

In 2005, the City of Austin discovered that coal-tar based asphalt sealant was killing the highly endangered Barton Springs salamander. The sealant was leaching off freshly sealed parking lots and entering downstream pools where these fragile animals live. The surprise ending to the City’s detective work was not only that the sealant was gradually destroying its river system but also that other asphalt sealants were far safer. More specifically, when the City investigated the market, it learned that there were other sealants that were vastly less toxic, identically effective, sold at the same price, and in some cases were made by the same company. The EPA and the Consumer Product Safety Commission did nothing in response to this discovery, so the City of Austin passed an ordinance to ban the use of the highly toxic variant of asphalt sealant. Home Depot followed the City’s lead …

Yesterday, The Hill published an opinion piece by Center for Progressive Reform President Rena Steinzor entitled, "Regulatory backlog threatens health and the environment."

According to Steinzor:

Opponents of regulation also seek to undermine the very legitimacy of agency rulemaking by fostering public hostility toward government and belittling life-saving regulation as “red tape.” What results is the gross politicization of the regulatory process, resulting in long delays and weaker rules, as measured in lives and health. For example, the cost of the recent eight-month delay of the EPA’s ozone rule is projected to be somewhere between 1,000 and 2,867 premature deaths. The simple truth is that cries of "over-regulation" from industry and its allies in Congress are hooey. Having lost pitched battles in Congress over adoption of various environmental, health, and safety laws, they're simply re-litigating their case, hoping to undermine the rules that …

After more than two years of White House review, OSHA has finally published its proposed new standards for silica exposure. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, Assistant Secretary David Michaels, and many other people both inside and outside the agency deserve congratulations for finally shaking the proposal loose from the clutches of the president’s regulatory review team in OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The publication of the proposal is an important step towards protecting millions of Americans who are exposed to the deadly dust in their workplaces.

But this is no time for the agency to rest on its laurels. As GAO noted in a recent report, OSHA proposals published in the 2000s took an average of three years to reach the “final rule” stage. If it takes that long to publish the final silica rule, it will be in jeopardy of falling prey …

Update: Verchick's testimony is here.

On Thursday, August 22, CPR Member Scholar Robert R.M. Verchick will testify before California's "Little Hoover Commission" about land-use planning to address the threat of climate change. The Commission is conducting a study of climate-change-adaptation efforts in the state, and Verchick, a professor at the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law and a former EPA official, will bring his expertise in environmental regulation, climate change adaptation and disaster law to the table.

We'll post his testimony to our website on Thursday, here. But you can also watch the session live. It'll be streamed at http://www.calchannel.com/. (Look for a link to the Little Hoover Commission.) The panel begins at 10:30 Pacific Time (1:30 ET).

Like no other mammoth corporation that did very bad things—not Enron, not WorldCom, not Exxon, and not even HSBC (which, after all, laundered money for the Mexican drug cartel and was allowed to pay a fine without pleading guilty!)—BP has not lost its arrogant swagger. In a fit of high dudgeon it filed a lawsuit last week challenging the one step the federal government has taken that could actually hurt the company over the long run: the long-overdue debarment of this chronic scofflaw from receiving contracts to supply fuel to the U.S. military. 

Despite the semi-hysterical, every-argument-known-to-humans tone of its 127-page legal filing, Bob Dudley, BP’s chief executive officer, has been blithe about the effect of the debarment on its bottom line: “We have largest acreage position in Gulf of Mexico, more than 700 blocks…that’s plenty, we have a lot (sic …

This blog is cross-posted on The Nature of Cities.

In my first blog post for The Nature of Cities, I wrote about environmental justice as a bridge between traditional environmentalism and an increasingly urban global population. I suggested that we had work to do to makes environmental concerns salient to a new, ever-more urban generation. Since then, I have been working to test this hypothesis. To that end, I developed an environmental justice education project being implemented in New York City schools. This project is built around Mayah’s Lot, the environmental justice comic book I co-wrote with artist Charlie LaGreca for the CUNY Center for Urban Environmental Reform (CUER). Funding for the project came from the CUNY Law School Innovation Fund. You can read the book here, and watch the video here.

(Full-disclosure, I am the founding director of CUER, and the Center’s mission in …

More than 400 inspectors with the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) worked, on average, more than 120 hours each two-week pay period.    Those were the findings of the agency’s Inspector General in an report issued late last month.  Their investigation covered FY 2012, and included field work conducted from November 2012 through February 2013.

FSIS inspectors are assigned to more than 6,000 meat, poultry and egg processing plants in the U.S.  They are responsible for ensuring that the product sold by companies to consumers is safe and wholesome.  These firms process tens of billions of red meat and poultry annually.  With some USDA inspectors working many hours of overtime—not just a couple hours per week, but an average of 20 extra hours each week—can their senses stay sharp and can they do their jobs effectively?

The IG mentioned that overworked …

Last week, Regulatory Czar Howard Shelanski embarked on his maiden voyage into the glamorous world of White House blogging, penning a post that touts the latest burden-reducing accomplishment of President Obama’s dubious regulatory “look-back” initiative.   On this auspicious occasion, he trumpets the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) proposed rulemaking to reduce the number of inspection reports that commercial truck drivers have to file, resulting in reduced paperwork burden costs to the tune of $1.7 billion annually.

Shelanski makes clear in the post that this DOT rulemaking is not an isolated incident, but is in fact part of the regulatory look-back initiative’s broader antiregulatory project. He explains that the initiative is necessary because “some regulations that were well crafted when first issued can become unnecessary over time as conditions change—and regulations that aren’t providing real benefits to society need to be streamlined, modified …