Probably some missing nuance. That said, it seems pretty indefensible that it’s taken the FAA more than a decade to reach a decision on an unleaded avgas alternative.
There is NO risk to the bureaucrats if they keep stalling on unleaded and let everyone run 100LL for all eternity.
This is oversimplifying. Yes, there is a bureaucratic bias towards inaction. But stonewalling is an action. The GAO audit the author posits could very well endgame key decision makers' careers.
You can write in basically anything as a manufacturer, doesn't mean it is binding unless it is an official communication. For example, I have a dirt bike that states to replace the piston every 10 hours of operation.
Maybe it's a conflation of many piston aircraft engine manufacturers' recommendation for a TBO (time between overhauls), which is often around 2000 hours. This is essentially a full rebuild of the engine. However, in many cases it's not regulatory and more of a suggestion (there are exceptions, like certain commercial use of the aircraft).
Sure it would be great to get rid of unleaded aviation gas, but ensuring we don't get a repeat of the 737-MAX issue might take priority.
But that's fast. Compare the FDA's decision on whether to continue mandating the exact ingredients in a "French dressing", which took 24 years despite being unopposed: https://reason.com/2022/01/12/the-fda-finally-liberates-fren...
That's not what's going on. French dressing is not a significant part of American culture; I'd be willing to believe a majority of Americans have no idea what it is. (I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing of it either, though it's probably visible as an option on restaurant menus.) Salad dressing in general is very common, but French dressing isn't.
The wording of the decision implies that the rule was justified on basically "truth in advertising" premises - the worry was that customers might rely on the label "French dressing" and be fooled into purchasing something they didn't want:
> After a comment and evaluation period, the FDA determined "that the standard of identity for French dressing no longer promotes honesty and fair dealing in the interest of consumers [...]"
There's no real way to know what the motivation actually was. A very neurotic regulator may have genuinely been worried about innovation in French dressing. Or something else might have been going on.
A somewhat similar issue that I also learned about from coverage in Reason is that the FDA imposes some "nutritional" requirements on products that are labeled "pasta", notably a minimum iron content. "Noodles", by contrast, are unregulated. (The words are synonymous.) In that case, the legislative history is apparently fairly clear that the motivation for regulation was protecting "pasta" manufacturers against economic competition from Asian imports. But the official justification is that these are nutritional standards on which customers rely. (Obviously false; the number of people in the US who are even aware that the definition of "pasta" is regulated is nearly zero.)