THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPT. OF AGR.

I’M NOT ONE WHO READS food labels closely. The taped music at our supermarket makes me jittery and I’m in no mood to inspect labels for BTL or RSVP or any of the chemicals that make laboratory rats’ tails stand straight up—I feel like a rat myself and run up and down the aisles throwing things into my cart and get out as fast as I can and feel fortunate. I don’t read labels once I get home either, because there’s no point in it. The food is bubbling away in its plastic cooking pouch in the boiling water, and why torment yourself with doubts and fears at the last minute? If it weren’t good for us, I figure, the government would not allow it to be on the shelves.

So it bothered me one day when I glanced at the label on a can of tomato soup and there was no Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. on it. I already had dumped the soup glop in the pan and added one cup of water slowly and was stirring occasionally, and read the label to make sure the directions hadn’t been changed to “add two cups of water quickly and whip to a white froth,” and there was no Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. I checked other labels in the cupboard: no Reg. Penna. on jars of raspberry jam, apple butter, Ovaltine, Louisiana hot sauce, instant cocoa, marmalade, maple syrup (some benzoate there, though), molasses, blueberry syrup (actually corn syrup and blueberry juice), chicken-bouillon cubes, baking powder, Puerto Rican pickled peppers, soups, corn, cake mix, or on couscous, or linguini, or on a bag of enriched rice (22 mg. of carbohydrates per 1 oz. serving). In the whole cupboard, I found a single solitary Reg. Penna. A package of dried “Oriental Noodles & Chicken Flavor Packet” manufactured in Industry, California.

When I was a little boy learning to read, I read everything out loud, Burma-Shave signs, “Popeye” and “Jiggs” and “Little Iodine” and “Winnie Winkle” in the Minneapolis Star, the Monkey Wards catalogue, No Trespassing, Post No Bills, state slogans on license plates, everything, including food labels, and I remember that Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. was on just about every package of food, along with Made in U.S.A., Tear Along Dotted Line, and Follow Directions Carefully. For a long time I didn’t know if it meant Regulated By or Registered With or Regretfully Yours, and a little joke among the school lunchroom crew that flattened the big tin cans and took them out to the trash barrel was that it stood for Regurgitated By, but, in a vague way, it represented government approval of the food, an official kosher mark put on in Pennsylvania.

That’s what Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. means to most of us, I guess. It isn’t as if the Supreme Court has upheld these peas as tender and delicious, but it’s some sort of affirmation, and with Reg. Penna. on the label, you can be fairly certain that the food doesn’t contain big dollops of potassium cyanide or any more milligrams of rodent parts than might be good for you. Its meaning, passed on to us from childhood, seems to be: “Eat what is put before you. Don’t complain. It’s good. Be glad you have it. Children in Asia would be very happy to eat this.”

If, as my cupboard study seems to suggest, Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. is passing from American shelf life, it’s probably because of militant consumers threatening lawsuits every time somebody eats a Reg. Penna. product and finds a hair in it. I suppose the Penna. people saw the handwriting on the wall and concluded that it was time to get out of the Reg. business. Their simple homely seal of approval had become an invitation for surly individuals to make trouble, so they quietly folded the Dept, and stole away. I don’t know this for a fact but I surmise it, based on childhood experience. My mother had six children, all of us consumer advocates when it came down to the food that was set before us. Any food that struck us as the least little tiny bit unusual, we ran tests on until it was stone cold. “It tastes funny!” we said. “What’s in this? It looks funny. It smells funny. Did you put green peppers in it?” Green peppers were our sodium nitrite. We blanched at the thought of them. We suspected every dish of containing trace elements of green peppers.

In the end, Mother surrendered to consumer interests and to the fear of green peppers. She gave her consumers what they demanded, which was spaghetti, hamburgers, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese. I think of her when I see shoppers grab up any package of food labeled Natural or No Preservatives. What makes Natural better than Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr.? Will we allow ourselves to be ruled utterly by suspicion and fear?

Beside this typewriter is a bottle of rubber cement clearly labeled: Danger: Extremely Flammable. Do Not Use Near Fire or Flame. N.Y.F.D.C. of A. 852. Why would the New York Fire Department issue a Certificate of Approval to an extremely flammable cement? Does this mean that the N. Y. F. D. certifies that this cement, though extremely flammable, is nevertheless safer than other, downright explosive cements? Is it flammable only if used carelessly? Is there no chance that this bottle could be a bad one and burst into flames, ignited by sunshine, hurling jagged bits of glass and flaming red-hot cement drops right up into my face before I finish writing this? Is the N. Y. F. D. going to accept responsibility for that and pay me six million dollars?

Every day we walk a treacherous path through dark valleys and over steep mountains, and unseen hands reach out to guide us at every step. We plunge into unlikely romances with uncertified persons, we take off on difficult missions to defend unspecified ideals; daily we risk our known lives in behalf of sweet mystery, and all on the basis of the slightest of clues, and accept happily uncertainties compared to which Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr. is practically a covenant. Its slight guarantee is intended to free us from hypochondria and the fear of dark specks in the asparagus so that we may get on to our real work in the world, which is justice, brotherhood, and freedom.