A4
East Oregonian
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
FDA needs to learn a new language
S
ome call it cowboy talk. Oth-
ers call it straight talk, plain
talk, talking turkey or just plain
English.
Whatever you want to call it, the
Food and Drug Administration often
doesn’t do it.
A case in point. The FDA has been
monkeying around — there’s some
plain talk for you — with the labels the
agency wants to paste on jars of honey
and maple syrup and on containers of
cranberry products.
The FDA wanted to tell consum-
ers what is in honey and maple syrup.
If ever there were two products that
need no label whatsoever, it’s honey and
maple syrup.
What’s in honey? H-O-N-E-Y. End
of story.
What’s in maple syrup? M-A-P-L-E
S-Y-R-U-P.
There’s no added anything. On the
nutritional labels of those two products,
only carbohydrates — sugars — are
listed.
What the ever-so-helpful FDA was
trying to do is point out that if someone
put honey or maple syrup on a pancake,
he would be adding sugar to it.
Fair enough, except the FDA said
that honey and maple syrup contained
Capital Press Photo
Maple syrup producers complain that a Food and Drug Administration labeling require-
ment will mislead consumers into thinking sugar is added to their product.
“added sugars” because they added
sugar to whatever they were put on.
In plain language, that is wrong.
How or why the FDA ever came up
with that idea, we cannot say. That’s
like saying milk has added ingredi-
ents because some people put it on their
cereal.
In the case of cranberry products,
anyone who has ever eaten one knows
they are tart. To make them less tart,
sugar is added to some products made
with cranberries. Why the FDA needs
to say anything, we cannot imagine. It’s
right there on the nutrition label.
Now, however, the FDA has
reworked these labels in a way that is
still bizarre. The labels now say that if
you put honey or maple syrup on a pan-
cake you will add sugar to your diet.
FDA might want to rename its label
policy “Nutrition for Dummies.”
Why the FDA gets itself involved in
such tomfoolery, we cannot say.
What we can say is the FDA is the
same agency that took the Food Safety
Modernization Act and wrote rules that
apply to everything from cattle feed
— distillers grains — to onions, which
had never been involved in food safety
problems.
By the time the FDA was done, the
food safety regulations included 14 final
rules and 36 separate guidance docu-
ments on such things as 12 pages on
counting the number of employees a
farm has. The title: “Determining the
Number of Employees for Purposes of
the ‘Small Business’ Definition in Parts
117 and 507 (CGMP and Preventive
Controls Regulations for Human and
Animal Food): Guidance for Industry.”
Good grief.
Such rules are nearly unreadable by
anyone who is not a bureaucrat. A new
industry has sprung up to help farmers
figure out what the FDA means in those
documents.
We have a suggestion. The folks
at the FDA should go back to school
and take a class: English as a second
language.
They have bureaucratese down, now
they should try cowboy talk.
OTHER VIEWS
Get patients some cold and allergy relief
Bend Bulletin
M
ethamphetamine is bad. Very bad.
That pretty much goes without
saying.
And pseudoephedrine is an ingredient in
one way to make methamphetamine, which
makes easy access to pseudoephedrine bad,
too.
But pseudoephedrine used correctly can
be an effective ingredient in cold and allergy
medication that works best for some people.
The Oregon Legislature “fixed” the prob-
lem in 2005 by banning over-the-counter
sales of products with pseudoephedrine. That
and other changes helped cut down on use and
production of methamphetamine.
Oregon’s law helped fix one problem. Get-
ting people effective relief to cold and allergy
symptoms is a problem, too. The right medi-
cation makes a big difference in whether peo-
ple can get on with their day productively or
might be better off in bed.
The Oregon law didn’t prevent people
from getting legal access to medication with
pseudoephedrine. It does mean it requires the
additional expense and hassle of a doctor’s
prescription.
Rep. Bill Post, R-Keizer, has tried multi-
ple times to create more flexibility in Oregon’s
law. He failed again, this year. It’s a shame.
Post’s House Bill 2303 would have put
the drugs behind the counter and tracked
their sale with the National Precursor Log
Exchange. More than half the states in the
country use it and it allows purchases of drugs
with pseudoephedrine to be tracked and
linked directly to an individual.
That solution raised alarm bells with pri-
vacy advocates, such as the American Civil
Liberties Union. Oregon’s ACLU testified
against the bill because law enforcement
has access to that patient database without a
warrant.
That basically killed that version of the
bill. A legislative alternative was to use Ore-
gon’s existing drug tracking system, called
the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program,
and put limits on the grams of the ingredient
sold. Then that had problems, as reported by
Salem’s Statesman Journal. Oregon’s system
doesn’t allow tracking in real time and doesn’t
allow any tracking of grams sold by individ-
ual. HB 2303 collapsed and is apparently dead
for this session.
Post should not give up and should come
back again next year with something that
will pass.
YOUR VIEWS
Oregon Republicans don’t
deserve our respect
I had hoped when lying Donald was
elected that the rapid degradation of the
Republican Party would remain mostly
a national issue. Fat chance. The pitiable
ploy of the Oregon Senate minority to flee
and hide like petulant teenagers who didn’t
get their way rather than doing the pri-
mary job they were elected to do — vote
on whether or not a bill becomes law — is
simply the latest proof that the GOP rot is
widespread and worsening.
My long-held respect for our local sen-
ator, Bill Hansell, evaporated after he
glibly told The Associated Press Thurs-
day he was hiding out somewhere “south
of Oregon.” At least he didn’t threaten to
shoot anyone, as one of his moronic col-
leagues hinted he was ready to do. What
a proud day for the Oregon GOP, aligning
itself with right-wing militias. (Next they’ll
be siding with Russia over the American
intelligence services.)
Sadly, we live in a time when Republi-
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of
the East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
cans and Democrats are so polarized that
about the only time legislation is passed is
when one “team” holds a solid majority.
But our GOP state senators, like their D.C.
role models, have shown they don’t think
rules apply to them. Don’t like how a vote
is going to turn out, then slink away and
hide so a proper quorum for a vote can’t be
achieved.
It sounds familiar, I’m afraid. Don’t
want the president to have a chance to
appoint a Supreme Court justice, then just
ignore the process and don’t let it go to a
vote. Don’t like how that last election went,
then redraw the district into a convoluted
shape that gathers the necessary voter base
to insure you win. Don’t like people of
color voting against you, then enact unnec-
essary voter access laws that dispropor-
tionately alienate those voters.
Welcome to 2019 and a GOP that didn’t
have the backbone or integrity to avert
being remolded into its leader’s image. The
transformation is complete, all the way
from Washington, D.C., to Salem.
Hal McCune
Pendleton
Republican senators should
be lauded for taking a stand
Oregon’s proposed “cap and trade” (House
Bill 2020) is more than a sales tax on all prod-
ucts, especially food and fuel.
According to Rep. Carl Wilson, R-Grants
Pass, “This is the most destructive bill to
ever come out of the House of Representa-
tives. Workers will tremendously suffer under
cap and trade. Thousands of jobs will be lost.
Wages will decline. Gas prices will increase
and family budgets will be strained. Climate
change is a global problem not an Oregon
problem. Oregon workers should not be pun-
ished for reckless environmental policies of
China and India.”
The fact is HB 2020 is a cap and trade
tax, a sales tax on all Oregonians, especially
the poor and middle class, that will have zero
impact on global warming or climate change.
The Socialist Democrat politicians that con-
trol Oregon have no regard for Oregonians
east of the Cascades or south of Eugene.
Their socialist policies foster homeless-
ness, making Oregon the second-highest
homeless state in America per capita. These
Democrats prefer illegal immigrants to Ore-
gonians, protecting predator wolves instead
of protecting cattle ranchers and abolishing
the Second Amendment instead of protecting
legal gun owner rights.
Stand behind our Oregon Republican sen-
ators that have made a stand against these
Democrat Socialist politicians that are usurp-
ing our constitutional heritage and our way
of life. Abraham Lincoln called our Decla-
ration of Independence a “rebuke and stum-
bling-block to tyranny and oppression.” Our
present Oregon government does not repre-
sent most of Oregon nor does it consider our
grievances. Our Republican Senators have
made a stand against the tyranny and oppres-
sion of a government that no longer represents
most of the state of Oregon. This may be our
last opportunity to thwart the socialist take-
over of our beloved state.
Do not return to the Oregon Senate, sena-
tors, until this oppression and bullying stops! Let
these patriot senators of Oregon and America
know we stand with them and will help bear the
price of liberty with our lives if need be.
Stuart Dick
Irrigon
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