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FDA Suspends Closure Of Field Safety Labs
After members of Congress expressed opposition, the Food and Drug Administration suspended plans yesterday to close more than half of its laboratories that check the safety of food and other products.
FDA regulatory affairs chief Margaret O'K. Glavin said in an e-mail that the proposal to shut seven of 13 field labs would be reconsidered, in part to provide a "fresh look" at the challenges facing her office and its plans for addressing them.
Two House members from Michigan, Reps. John D. Dingell (D) and Bart Stupak (D), hailed the e-mail as an indication of FDA's decision to "abandon" its reorganization. But agency spokeswoman Julie Zawisza denied that the agency had canceled its plans.
The FDA said it sought to consolidate its lab network to modernize its food safety efforts and to make more efficient use of space. The proposal was met with protests from lawmakers, lab employees who testified before Congress and the union that represents much of the FDA workforce. Lawmakers said the closings would weaken the FDA's ability to detect tainted food imports.
Immigration Won't Halt Raids During Census
Immigration officials said they will not "entertain any request to scale back" enforcement raids during the 2010 census, a day after refusing to take such an unequivocal position.
The Constitution requires the Census Bureau to count everyone, including illegal immigrants, in the census. Raids during the population count would make an already distrustful group even less likely to cooperate with government workers who are supposed to include them in the head count, Deputy Director Preston Jay Waite had said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents informally agreed to cooperate with the Census Bureau during the 2000 census by not conducting any large-scale raids, said Waite and Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the Census Bureau during the 2000 count.
Public discussion about possibly repeating the policy in 2010 knocked the Bush administration off message a week after two members of the president's Cabinet announced stepped-up efforts to enforce the nation's immigration laws.
New Delay Is Sought In Eavesdropping Probe
The White House asked a Senate panel for more time to produce subpoenaed information about the legal justification for President Bush's secretive eavesdropping program.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) had set Monday as the deadline for administration officials already subpoenaed to provide documents and testimony about the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.
A Leahy aide said that the White House, at its request, had been given one extension and that White House counsel Fred F. Fielding then suggested that the administration could comply with the subpoena by Aug. 1. A deadline was set for three weeks after that date.
Fielding asked Leahy in a letter released yesterday to push back the deadline until after Labor Day. The White House had identified a core group of documents in response to the subpoenas, Fielding wrote, but the work is "by no means complete" and could not be finished by Monday.
-- From News Services
