
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 11, 1994                   TAG: 9405110103
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

DELAY LIKELY IN NEW FOOD LABEL RULES

Food packagers stuck with millions of dollars in suddenly outdated wrappers, cans and boxes are on the verge of winning a temporary reprieve from new food labeling requirements because of an intense three-week lobbying campaign.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler agreed Tuesday to legislation that would give packagers until Aug. 18 to use up already-printed food containers that do not meet the labeling requirements that took effect Sunday.

Kessler told the Senate Appropriations agriculture subcommittee that he empathized with the problems of businesses stuck with warehouses full of old packaging. ``We stand ready to work with'' Congress in softening the blow for those affected, he said.

The subcommittee's chairman, Dale Bumpers, D-Ark., introduced the bill last week that would delay the new labeling requirement.

The FDA director's agreement meant Bumpers' bill likely would sail through Congress, and was a sweet victory for the packagers, who had been unable to get relief through their own entreaties to FDA.

The next stop, beginning last month, was to lobby Bumpers and Rep. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., whose subcommittees control the FDA's budget, by getting constituents to call them.

``You go to companies, big and small, in Arkansas that are heavily affected,'' said Jack Lewis, a lobbyist for the Paperboard Packaging Institute, who organized the effort.

One example is the Rice Millers Association, which Lewis said couldn't get bags with the new labels quickly enough to meet the deadline. Arkansas is the nation's largest rice producer.

An allied trade group, the Can Manufacturers Institute, attacked at the same time on the legal front. The group won a temporary restraining order in federal court on Friday barring enforcement of the new rule for beverage cans already printed with the old labels.

Still others in the industry raised questions in President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget about whether FDA had properly cleared its rule interpretation with the White House.

The packaging industry was worried that the new regulations would require millions of dollars worth of outdated packaging to be carted off to the dump.

Many package makers were relying on an FDA rule that said products labeled before May 8 could still be sold after the deadline. They believed that meant stocks of already printed boxes and bags could be used up.

But the FDA called that ``a complete misreading'' of the rule. Only packages already filled with food by May 8 could be sold after the deadline, the agency said.

Until Tuesday's hearing, regulators said they were concerned that some food packagers could take advantage of any slack in the rules to stockpile out-of-date packages and noncomplying food could persist on store shelves for years.

by CNB