Uniformity for food act is uniformly bad.(View point: THE CONSUMERS UNION PERSPECTIVE)

If you suspect it was something you ate, you are not alone. More than 76 million cases of food-borne illness occur each year, 325,000 people are sick enough to be hospitalized, and five thousand people actually die. But most of us just suffer through the discomfort, vowing never again to eat the chicken salad, raw oyster, or whatever it was we think made us sick.

State and local health departments could do more to protect us from food-borne illness. But the food industry has other ideas; it's pushing for state and local agencies to do less. And it may just succeed.

In March 2006, the food industry, led by processors like Heinz, Coca-Cola, and Kraft and supported by the National Fisheries Institute and the International Dairy Foods Association, used its considerable lobbying muscle to get the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the National Uniformity for Food Act. The name of the bill is deceptive; while it seems to make sense to have uniform standards nationwide, in fact, this law would be devastating to food safety.

The reason is that the bulk of the job of keeping our food safe is handled by state and local agriculture and health departments, operating under laws that fill in for the many deficiencies and huge gaps in federal regulation. But the act nullifies food-safety or labeling requirements that are not identical to Food and Drug Administration rules or regulations, even where no federal standards exist.

The Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO), a trade group of food regulators, says that 80 percent of food-safety enforcement actions are taken by state and local agencies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the act would nullify about 200 state laws, including Alabama's standards ...