Outdated Delaney Clause Faces
Another Effort To Force Reform

MOSCOW, Idaho — For nearly 40 years, the American food industry has operated under a policy that prohibits the processing of food containing the smallest trace of various pesticides. Scientists have considered that policy technologically outdated for years, but bureaucrats and activists have repeatedly stymied reform.

Another effort appears to be underway to bring the law into the modern age.

The so-called Delaney Clause, added to food safety legislation in 1958, establishes an ironclad zero-tolerance rule — no additive or pesticide thought to have induced cancer in humans or animals may be present in processed food, not even in infinitesimal amounts.

Reformers would replace the zero-tolerance requirement and use instead a "negligible risk" standard for determining the safety of both processed and unprocessed food.

Procedures for detecting substances in food have improved greatly since the days of the Delaney rule, explains Bernadene Magnuson, a University of Idaho food scientist and toxicologist. When the law was originally passed, analytical methods were so crude that any detectable trace represented a significant level of chemical. Today’s equipment, however, allows detection of residues in amounts as low as one part per trillion.

When scientists detect substances at levels that low, Magnuson says, it is equivalent to locating one particular second in 32,000 years or finding one particular inch in a cable 16 million miles long.

Depending upon the substance in question, such minute traces may entirely safe, but the wording of the Delaney Clause prohibits them anyway.

Magnuson says the industry is also looking for consistency. She points to different rules for raw and processed food.

Currently, if scientific tests indicate there will be no significant health hazards for humans, raw foods may contain traces of pesticide residue, while zero-tolerance still applies to processed food.

Tim Willard of the National Food Processors Association maintains a sensible food safety policy would allow the use of pesticides that pose only a negligible risk to health.

Today, scientists can reliably identify exposure levels for which the residual cancer risk is negligible, he says. But under the Delaney Clause, evidence that the risk to human health will be trivial does not matter. Pesticides are being banned even though the cancer risk in foods treated with them does not approach one in a million.

Support for the Delaney Clause comes principally from activist organizations.

Congress has the industry alternative under review as part of the Food Quality Protection Act, that would also bar states from enforcing their own food laws if they are more stringent than federal regulations.

Fred Kuchler, a U.S. Department of Agriculture economist in Washington, D.C., believes Delaney Clause defenders and critics may be closer than most people realize to finding a mutually agreeable food safety policy.

"Consider chemicals that are clearly harmful to humans," he says. "Everyone agrees that they should not go into the food we consume. There is general agreement, too, concerning the acceptability of many ‘good’ chemicals we use."

Where there is disagreement, Kuchler says, is chiefly in a gray area regarding chemicals some people consider potentially harmful while others do not.

"As research goes on, we'll also achieve agreement regarding these materials," Kuchler said. "Knowledge does build consensus."