FROM THE FIELD
December 2005
Time to Regulate the Regulators?

In a world that’s globalizing everything, wouldn’t you think we could do a better job, at least on national and local levels, of getting smarter, more cohesive regulatory processes? Back when we were all fairly rustic, and business was mostly local, and enforcement was hit-and-miss, inconsistencies and local quirks were not a big deal. But now, even the regulatory business is matured, which means we have an awful lot of regulations rubbing up against each other, and they’re not always cohesive. Trying to run an inter-jurisdiction enterprise is now downright ridiculous.

Can anyone in their right minds, for example, rationalize why we have 50 states writing their own health codes based on different vintages of the FDA Model Food Code? Why do you have to wonder what the holding requirements are from place to place? Bacteria don’t much care which state they’re in. Where science is the core issue, why should different jurisdictions arrive at different answers? Building codes, which might need to account for differing conditions from place to place, are beginning to homogenize but remain bewildering, and probably more so than necessary. Ditto plumbing standards. Water jurisdictions are implementing their own regulations about fats, oils and grease effluent. Why should a FOG contamination be a big deal in one place but unregulated in another?

Many code organizations loudly invite "input" but quietly restrict voting.

And energy? So far, a dozen states have passed laws mandating energy efficiency levels for a variety of appliances including kitchen equipment. Seven of those states joined the list just this year. Most of the states are modeling their standards after California’s, but there are differences. Now, much belatedly, along comes the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which impacts a variety of appliances effective Jan. 1, 2010.

The list of questions goes on and on. Should a toaster need a hood? Why should the answer to that question depend on where you are? And what kind of question is that, anyway? It’s about the food emissions, not the category of equipment, per se. With all due respect to the time-honored principal of federalism, separation of powers and so on, the results suggest quite a few of us don’t know what we’re doing.

The code bodies, for their part, try their best. But the inherent flaw in most groups is twofold: First, they’re not experts in the industries and applications they’re writing code for. And second, they don’t trust the industries they’re trying to regulate. Many code groups, not to embarrass any in particular, loudly invite “input” from industry, and yet quietly restrict voting rights to code officials only. So in the end, the control and the knowledge are still in two different places.

What’s the fix? A certification standard called ISO/IEC 65:1996. It prescribes how certification bodies (which would include such groups as code officials) should operate, including recommendations for what interests should be represented in the voting bodies, and in what proportions, etc. It’s a great commonsense solution.

Now, if we can just convince the code bodies to conform.

Brian Ward
Chief Editor