Upsetting the Applecart

At 79, Ira C. Cardiff is boss of the biggest dried apple plant in Washington's Yakima Valley. A onetime biology professor, he is also a philosopher who corresponded for years with Santayana, and the author of half a dozen books ranging from A Million Years of Human Progress to What Great Men Think of Religion (he is an atheist). But among businessmen of Yakima, Cardiff is best known for his relentless war with inspectors of the federal Food & Drug Administration. In a series of battles, boasts Cardiff, "I've licked 'em every time."

Last week, in winning his greatest battle, Apple Seller Cardiff upset the Food & Drug Administration's entire applecart. In a case that Cardiff has been fighting for nearly three years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal inspectors have no right to inspect a food plant without the owner's permission. In effect, the decision, based on "vague" language in the law, wiped away most of the evidence-gathering power of the Food & Drug Administration.

Ira Cardiff got into the apple business as a Ph.D. from Columbia who went to Washington to run the state's agricultural testing station. He soon saw that the future of the apple industry lay in dried fruit, and took over the Yakima Valley's biggest packing plant. His first brush with the Government was over a rigid Agriculture Department ruling on how much arsenic spray could be left on apples and pears put on sale. Cardiff, arguing for more arsenic, led a five-year fight to get the Agriculture Department to relax the regulation, and finally won. Later, in four separate cases, Food & Drug Administration inspectors seized a shipment of Cardiff apples on the ground that they were contaminated. In each case, Cardiff fought through the courts, and won. One reason for his success was that Ira Cardiff knows as much about the Food & Drug Act as any man alive: he helped prepare it.

Cardiff's victory last week stemmed from the day in 1950 when two inspectors arrived in his office and demanded to see the plant. Cardiff refused. In federal court, he was fined $300, but won a reversal on appeal. At that, the Food & Drug Administration took the case to the Supreme Court.

Last week, with their powers clipped, food & drug inspectors were still making the rounds in the food industry, inspecting plants where owners gave them permission (most food men let them in). The Food & Drug Administration, meanwhile, was getting ready to ask the new Congress for mandatory inspection powers--written this time in language that everyone, including the Supreme Court, would understand.

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