The evil, black market, handmade soap industry has been getting away for years without being regulated, and Senator Dianne Feinstein and her cohort Senator Susan Collins refuse to let such unfettered capitalism reign.
If you’ve ever been on such sites as Etsy or Soaptopia, you’ve probably noticed the hundreds of independent soap makers, many of which make their products in their own home. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the large, corporate soap manufacturers, Feinstein and Collins have introduced and sponsored S.1014, the “Personal Care Products Safety Act”. We the need the safety-ness due to the thousands of people being killed by home made soaps each yer (sarcasm).
Like most bills, it has little to do with the title of it, and more to do with increasing regulations and costs of doing business for the small soap shops.
The summary text of the bill reads:
This bill amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to require cosmetics companies to register their facilities with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and to submit to the FDA cosmetic ingredient statements that include the amounts of a cosmetic’s ingredients. Companies must pay a facility registration fee based on their annual gross sales of cosmetics. The collected fees can only be used for cosmetic safety activities.
If the FDA determines that a cosmetic has a reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences, it may prohibit the cosmetic’s distribution by suspending the cosmetic ingredient statement. If other cosmetics from the same facility may be affected, the FDA may prohibit distribution from the facility by suspending the facility’s registration.
The FDA must review the safety of at least five cosmetic ingredients each year, and it may establish conditions for safe use of an ingredient, including a limit on the amount of the ingredient or a requirement for a warning label. A cosmetic cannot be sold if it contains an ingredient that is not safe, not safe under the recommended conditions of use, or not safe in the amount present in the cosmetic.
Jeffery Tucker, of Foundation For Economic Education adds:
And guess who is supporting it? Their backers call them “stakeholders.” That’s another way of saying the dominant industrial groups: Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Estee Lauder, L’Oréal and Revlon. These companies are the fist within the glove of “consumer protection.” If they can raise the costs of doing business, driving the small businesses that sell on Etsy out of business, they have a firmer hold on their market share.
“We do feel it’s very important that the FDA’s authority in this space bring peace of mind to consumers and at the same time reflect modern science and advancements,” Darrel Jodrey, Executive Director of Federal Affairs for Johnson & Johnson, told the press, conveniently forgetting to mention how such regulation would help his own company.
