Efforts to increase the use of recycled plastics and other materials in food packaging are being stymied by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA not only regulates food additives, such as saccharin, but also regulates the materials used to package food as indirect additives.

• The FDA approved 105 requests for use of different packaging materials from 1990 to 1994, but 55 percent were delayed for more than two years.

• Because the FDA scrutinizes recycled materials more closely, food packagers do not normally use recycled materials unless the FDA has issued a "non-objection letter," but getting such approval costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• In July 1995, the FDA exempted from regulation materials that are noncarcinogenic and fall below a threshold of expected dietary concentration of 0.5 parts per billion.

• However, requests for "non-objection letters" must now include an environmental assessment, adding months to the approval process.

Since it began regulating indirect additives in 1958, the FDA has never seized food because of hazardous packaging material, and admits that indirect additives migrate to food in such "minuscule amounts" that they are "of extremely low or no toxicological concern in terms of food safety." Nevertheless, the agency uses "conservative risk assessment methods" which assume that any contaminants in the packaging will migrate to the food, regardless of whether such a migration has actually been detected.

This is an area in which deregulation would benefit both consumers and the environment - consumers would benefit from lower-cost food packaging, and the environment would benefit from lowering the barriers that discourage use of recycled materials.