The Watchdog Wakes Up

By Anastasia Toufexis

For a while now, the makers of many vegetable oils have had a nice little gimmick going. On their bottles, in big, easy-to-read letters, are the words "no cholesterol," sometimes printed with a cute drawing of a healthy heart. The implicit message: Cook all the French fries you want in this oil and don't worry about heart disease.

The only problem with this marketing ploy is that it is nonsense. Cholesterol is found only in foods from animals, and thus putting "no cholesterol" on a vegetable-oil label is misleading. More pertinent to the consumer is the fact that the oils are a liquid form of fat -- pure fat. And high-fat diets have been linked to heart disease, breast cancer and a variety of other ailments. So hold the French fries.

Not so long ago, the food industry could pull this kind of shenanigan with impunity. But that was before the emergence of the new Food and Drug Administration. Not the old, demoralized, anything-goes agency whose officials accepted bribes for approving untested generic drugs, but an FDA that seems to be rededicated to protecting the public. Last week the FDA ordered Procter & Gamble, the manufacturer of Crisco Corn Oil, along with Best Foods, which markets Mazola Corn Oil, and Great Foods of America, maker of HeartBeat Canola Oil, to cut out the "no cholesterol" business. While Best Foods and Great Foods stalled by saying they would work with the FDA to resolve the dispute, P&G went ahead and announced it would drop the offending words from Crisco -- and also voluntarily remove the "no cholesterol" claim from Duncan Hines cake mixes, Fisher Nuts, Puritan Oil and Pringle's potato chips.

It was the second time in three weeks that the FDA had dared challenge the big food companies. The first target was Citrus Hill Fresh Choice orange juice, another P&G product. After more than a year of wrangling over the word "fresh" (the product is made from concentrate and is pasteurized), the FDA had U.S. marshals impound 24,000 half-gallon cartons of the juice at a suburban Minneapolis warehouse. P&G gave in within two days. Unilever subsidiary Ragu Foods, which since 1989 had been skirmishing over the same word on labels for its processed pasta sauce, soon dropped its fight. And earlier this month two other companies revealed that they were removing "fresh" from pasta sauces: Nestle from the Contadina brand and Kraft from DiGiorno sauce.

The architect of the new FDA is David Kessler, 39, who became commissioner last December. Kessler is a far cry from the Rita Lavelle-style, wine-and- dine-with-the-industry regulators who reigned during the Reagan years. With a degree in medicine from Harvard and one in law from the University of Chicago, he understands health issues and knows how to devise and enforce tough regulations. In the early '80s he served as a consultant on FDA matters to Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who brought Kessler's talents to the attention of the Bush Administration. But the White House, with its friends in Big Business and its fealty to the philosophy of deregulation, may not have expected so much activism so soon. "I have no problems making decisions," declares Kessler, who is investigating several strategies to bolster FDA enforcement. Among them: levying fines, giving subpoena powers to agency inspectors and searching through corporate records.

Food companies contend that the confusion about their labeling stems not from deception on their part but from the government's failure to issue clear guidelines for making nutritional and health claims. The FDA plans to set forth revised labeling rules next year. "Once these regulations are out," says John Cady, president of the National Food Processors Association, "industry will know clearly what the FDA expects and will certainly comply." Cady charges that Kessler's current "hunt-and-peck approach" of | targeting big companies is largely an effort to shine up the FDA's tarnished image.

The agency surely needs better public relations -- and much more. A report issued last week by an advisory panel to the Department of Health and Human Services concludes that the FDA is underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed by its mandate, which ranges from approving drugs and monitoring the nation's blood supply to checking food imports and regulating the cosmetics industry. From 1979 to 1988, 23 laws were passed that broadened the FDA's responsibilities; at the same time, the agency lost 900 of its 8,100 employees.

That slide may finally be over. Congress has boosted the agency's budget by $150 million in the past two years, to $682 million for 1991, and the number of staff positions is up again to about 8,400. With that backing, Kessler hopes to strengthen the FDA in all areas. By picking on big food companies sensitive to publicity, he has made an astute start at establishing himself -- and re-establishing the FDA -- as the nation's top health cop.

With reporting by Dick Thompson/Washington and Linda Williams/New York