| Two weeks after the Oregon House voted for HB 2726, a bill that would require chain restaurants in Oregon with more than 15 locations nationwide to post calorie counts on menu boards (full text of the bill can be found here), yesterday the Oregon State Senate followed suit and overwhelmingly voted for passage as well. The bill moves on to Democratic Governor Ted Kulongoski, who has already said he will sign it into law.
There is good news and bad here, though. The good news, of course, is that restaurants will no longer be allowed to hide certain information about their food from their customers. The bad news, however, is that this bill is more like one step forward and three-fourths of a step back.
The first problem is that the bill is modeled after the relatively weak (and now outdated) legislation passed here in Multnomah County (Portland) last year. Multnomah County was one of the first localities in America to pass menu labeling legislation, and since then much stronger measures have passed elsewhere (specifically in Massachusetts, which was the first to include requirements for drive-thru menu board postings). We should have looked to pass something more along the lines of the Massachusetts legislation, since the majority of fast food purchases are made at drive thru windows.
The second problem is pre-emption of local regulations, which effectively delayed implementation of an already passed public health measure here in Multnomah County for another year. The industry lobbyists got their way on this one, unfortunately. I'm having a hard time understanding why, if our state legislators believe the Multnomah County legislation was a good enough idea to pass at the statewide level (and remember, the bill's sponsors are also promoting it as a public health measure), why are they delaying implementation of menu labeling here in Portland at the same time? On top of that, my concern is also that this may be it, and it will now be much harder to pass any stronger legislation in the future to provide people with more necessary information about their food choices; since as we all know, there is much more in food to think about than just calories. Now, people may never be able to find that other information. |
