The Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton reports on the under-covered topic of what the Food and Drug Administration and Consumer Product Safety Commission have been up to in the Obama administration. George W. Bush and a Republican Congress eviscerated funding for both regulatory agencies and Bush appointed members to FDA and CPSC that were often from industry and often against the regulation of food, drugs and consumer products.

Obama has appointed more pro-regulatory leaders and so far they have enacted small but significant changes. Take the FDA’s regulation of Cheerios:

In their first few months on the job, FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg and deputy Joshua M. Sharfstein — both with backgrounds running public health agencies — notified General Mills that it was violating the law with its two-year-old marketing campaign that said Cheerios can lower cholesterol by 4 percent. The FDA said the company was essentially making a drug claim, which would require clinical studies and agency approval before a product is put on the market. The food giant has removed that claim from its Web site and a spokeswoman said it is in discussions with the FDA.

FDA regulates products that make up a 1/4 of the economy, including prescription drugs and medical devices like heart catheters, so they better be dealing with bigger issues than Cheerios. But this is the kind of role the federal government should play — General Mills shouldn’t be able to make some unsubstantiated health claim about Cheerios. That deceives consumers and distorts the market. It’s up to FDA, and CPSC, to keep companies honest.

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