The Risk to Food Safety Protections Posed by the Regulatory Accountability Act: Past, Present, and Future

The misleadingly named Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) would have a devastating impact on the ability of the federal government to respond to outbreaks in our food supply that sicken consumers, as well as other threats to public health and the safety of our food. The safeguards listed below, past, present, and future, would have been (or would be) undermined or stopped cold by the RAA: they would fail its inflexible cost/benefit test, be stalled by the White House, challenged in court, or simply never be initiated because the agency would balk at the prospect of a grueling trial-type hearing.