6634 1986e COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS DON FUQUA, Florida JACK BROOKS, Texas, Chairman JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan STEPHEN L. NEAL, North Carolina ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia JOHN M. SPRATT, JR., South Carolina GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin FRANK HORTON, New York THOMAS N. KINDNESS, Ohio WILLIAM F. CLINGER, JR., Pennsylvania ALFRED A. (AL) MCCANDLESS, California HOWARD C. NIELSON, Utah PATRICK L. SWINDALL, Georgia JOHN E. GROTBERG, Illinois ALBERT G. BUSTAMANTE, Texas MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California WILLIAM M. JONES, General Counsel STEPHEN M. DANIELS, Minority Staff Director and Counsel CONTENTS Barnard, Hon. Doug, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State of Georgia, and Chairman, Commerce, Consumer, and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee: Opening statement Drake, William T., Deputy Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Department of the Treasury, accompanied by John Man- freda, chief counsel, Alcohol and Tobacco, and Bruce Weininger, Chief, Industry Compliance Division.... Martini, John H., president, New York State Wine Grape Growers, Inc Taylor, John M., Office of Enforcement, Office of the Associate Commis- sioner for Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug Administration, Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services, accompa- nied by Robert Lake, Acting Director, Office of Compliance, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and Curtis Coker, Office of Compli- ance, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Wessinger, Hugh J., Senior Associate Director, Resources, Community, Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by: Drake William T., Deputy Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Equipment needed for examining imported beverage alcohols for con- Information concerning legal authority over contaminated wines.. Submission to Congressman Horton's additional questions.. Horton, Hon. Frank, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Lake, Robert, Acting Director, Office Compliance, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services: Information con- cerning toxicity and health risk associated with DEG consumption ....... Mrazek, Robert J., a Representative in Congress from the State of New York: April 16, 1986, article from the Wall Street Journal entitled "What's in Wine? More Than You Might Imagine".. Taylor, John M., Office of Enforcement, Office of the Associate Commis- Submissions to Congressman Horton's additional questions 118 Wessinger, Hugh J., Senior Associate Director, Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division, General Accounting Office: BATF Product Alert circular concerning methanol contamination in APPENDIXES Appendix 1.-Subcommittee's June 13, 1986, followup letter to BATF and A. BATF's legal analyses on its statutory authority to require testing and B. BATF documentation: BATF product alert/industry memo in July 1985, sample label approval and actual label for wine containing DEG, and memo on BATF task force. C. Thirteen BATF press releases announcing names of wines found to be Page 135 305 340 340 370 375 427 Appendix 4.-Material concerning DEG toxicity and risk to health.. 433 444 Appendix 6.-Miscellaneous material.. 445 Appendix 7.-BATF's August 1986 letter supplementing information in its 450 FEDERAL EFFORTS TO IDENTIFY AND REMOVE CONTAMINATED IMPORTED WINES WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1986 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMERCE, CONSUMER, AND OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Doug Barnard, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Doug Barnard, Jr., and Ben Erdreich. Also present: Representatives Frank Horton and Robert J. Mrazek. Staff present: Stephen R. McSpadden, counsel; Faye Ballard, clerk; Alexander B. Cook and Scott Fisher, minority professional staff, Committee on Government Operations. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN BARNARD Mr. BARNARD. The subcommittee will come to order. Today the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee will examine the adequacy of Federal agency efforts to identify and remove contaminated wines, both imported and domestic, from the marketplace. In mid-July 1985, our Government first received reports of contaminated Austrian wines within the United States. Later, some German and Italian wines were implicated. In April of this year, there were a number of deaths in Italy reportedly caused by contaminated Italian wine. The purpose of this hearing is to determine how well the U.S. Government has responded to these recent events. The subcommittee will hear from the General Accounting Office, which recently released a report, "Imported Wines-Identifying and Removing Wines Contaminated With Diethylene Glycol [DEG]," prepared at the request of the ranking minority member of the Government Operations Committee, Congressman Frank Horton, who is with us today. The subcommittee will hear from senior officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [BATF], and the Food and Drug Administration [FDA], both of which have jurisdiction over contaminated wine or presume to have. Finally, we shall hear from two representatives of domestic wine producers, who will talk about the standards they follow to assure the purity and safety of wine. (1) The responses by these two agencies to the diethylene glycol scare last year, involving primarily Austrian wines, and to the more recent methanol contamination, involving some Italian wines, constitute two case studies of the Federal Government's ability to identify, test, and remove wines contaminated by toxic substances. We will seek answers to the following questions raised by the GAO's report and its followup work: Are BATF's and FDA's statutory authority adequate, particularly their authority to require importers and wholesalers of wine to test for, submit reports on, and remove harmfully contaminated wine? Do BATF or FDA routinely test wines for harmful contaminants? Did FDA, the primary and most experienced agency for recalling harmful food products, defer responsibility and not provide guidance to BATF, whose authority and experience are limited to the mislabeling of alcoholic beverages? If so, why? Did BATF sufficiently focus its notification and identification efforts on the importers of Austrian wine, rather than on wine importers in general? Did BATF rely excessively on importers and wholesalers to remove contaminated wine, and did it monitor or verify importers' and wholesalers' actions in doing so? Did BATF treat the DEG scare more as a mislabeling issue than a health-related one, by focusing its removal efforts on numerous Austrian, German, and Italian wines rather than on the few brands of Austrian wine posing the most significant risk to health? Have BATF's efforts to find methanol-tainted wines been effective, and how have these efforts differed from BATF's actions on the DEG contamination? And, finally, we want to determine what steps BATF and FDA may be taking to develop new policies and procedures, as recommended by the GAO. I am frankly concerned by GAO's conclusion BATF's actions did not provide a high degree of confidence that all DEG-contaminated wines, particularly those with high levels of DEG, were identified and removed from the market. This raises two overriding questions for this hearing: Are there a number of harmfully contaminated wines still sitting on retailer shelves or in wholesaler warehouses? And, what happens if there is a next time? Will FDA and BATF be better prepared in the future to meet any threat caused by imported contaminated wines? We are delighted to have with us today the senior ranking Republican member of the Government Operations Committee, Congressman Frank Horton of New York, and, Congressman Horton, would you have an opening statement at this time. Mr. HORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to express my appreciation to you for holding this hearing and, second, because I am not a member of this subcommittee, although I am an ex officio member, I do appreciate the opportunity to participate in this particular hearing. At the outset also, Mr. Chairman, just so it is on the record, I have a couple of people that are friends of mine that are here and I would like to introduce them. They are not constituents, they are |