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Are Americans too dumb to fry an egg? New egg warning label suggests we are

    WASHINGTON, DC -- A new federal plan to require a cigarette-style health warning on egg cartons -- that's right: egg cartons! -- proves that government bureaucrats think Americans are too dumb to boil an egg.

    And that's no yolk.

    "The eggheads in Washington, DC have gone too far," charged Bill Winter, Director of Communications for the Libertarian Party. "This new regulation -- which assumes that Americans can't cook breakfast without instructions from the FDA -- shows what happens when bureaucrats' judgment has been fried, scrambled, and poached by too much power."

    This month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it wants to require all egg cartons to carry a new warning label, which will lecture consumers about the danger of improperly cooked eggs.

    The label would read: "For your protection: Keep eggs refrigerated; cook eggs until yolks are firm; and cook foods containing eggs thoroughly."

    The President's Council on Food Safety is also getting into the act: It has announced it will come up with its own "strategic plan" to control egg safety by November 1.

    But Libertarians say the regulation has laid an egg.

    "Think about the real message behind this warning label," said Winter. "Bureaucrats are, in essence, saying to the American people: 'You eat 67 billion eggs a year, but we can't trust you to put them in your refrigerator, or to cook them properly. So, with our new federally mandated warning label, we're going to nag you every time you pick up an egg carton. Why? Because you're too dumb to be trusted.' "

    Ironically, the new warning comes at a time when food-borne illnesses caused by salmonella are falling: They declined by 44% from 1996 to 1998, thanks in large part to voluntary quality-control standards implemented by the egg industry.

    And experts agree that eggs have never been particularly dangerous: While the average American eats 245 eggs annually, the odds of running into a spoiled egg is only one in 20,000. So, a typical consumer might encounter a dangerous egg once every 42 years.

    But if bureaucrats can demand a warning label for a problem that might occur every 42 years, so can Libertarians, said Winter.

    "We're concerned that bureaucrats may have missed some egg-related problems, so we've got some warning labels of our own to propose," he said. For example:

    * WARNING: Remove egg from shell before eating.

    * WARNING: Just say no to over easy.

    * WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

    And probably the most useful one, from the perspective of the Washington, DC crowd, said Winter:

    * WARNING: Don't throw these eggs at the bureaucrats and politicians who think Americans are too dumb to fry an egg.

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