September 18, 1985

In 1956, the story goes, Estes Kefauver, then a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, stopped at the supermarket and bought a packaged cherry pie. The picture on the package showed a slice stuffed with cherries. The pie inside the box, however, was mostly crust. Furious, the Senator from Tennessee introduced the first comprehensive legislation against deceptive food labeling. This month, nearly 30 years later, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, is expected to introduce a bill expanding that legislation by requiring that the sodium, potassium and fat content of all foods be listed on the label. ''How can anybody resist the right of all Americans to know what's in the food they buy,'' the Senator said in a recent interview. ''Right now they do not.'' In the decades between these two events, there have been numerous changes in food labeling requirements. ''There is a lot more information on today's labels,'' said Ronald Brewington, director of the food standards and labeling division of the United States Department of Agriculture, which reviews 120,000 labels each month. ''The argument now is between whether there should be more or whether what is there is too confusing.''

Calling on Congress ''to work with me,'' President Reagan warned tonight that ''a mindless stampede toward protectionism will be a one-way trip to economic distaster.'' In a nationally televised news conference, the President held firm against rising Congressional pressures to pass protectionist legislation. He said such restrictions could impair economic progress and result in retaliation that could ''deliver an economic death blow'' to thousands of American farms. Although Mr. Reagan sounded the tough antiprotectionist line, he and aides met today with Congressional leaders involved in drafting a trade bill that would incorporate elements of numerous pending bills and would strengthen the Administration's hand in combatting unfair trade practices. White House officials said that the Administration was willing to work with the Congress on such trade legislation.

The Senate voted today to establish a new Government program under which farmers could bring up to 350,000 aliens into the United States to harvest perishable fruit and vegetables. The proposal was adopted by a vote of 51 to 44 as an amendment to a comprehensive bill designed to curtail illegal immigration. The Senate last week rejected a similar amendment by a vote of 50 to 48. The two proposals differed in one significant way: The amendment adopted today set an explicit limit on the number of temporary foreign workers who could be admitted under the program at any one time.

A Washington dispatch on Aug. 7 about United States legal efforts to restrict Japanese killing of sperm whales incorrectly described Japan's response to an International Whaling Commission moratorium on sperm whaling.

A little-known group has taken responsibility for kidnapping a daughter of President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador, according to two Government officials involved in the case. A man who said he represented the Pedro Pablo Castillo Front telephoned Government officials on Friday and Saturday to say the group was holding Mr. Duarte's eldest daughter, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, the officials said. The group also sent President Duarte a tape recording of Miss Duarte to prove that she was alive, one of the officials added. The caller, the official said, made two demands: a halt to all Government military operations to facilitate negotiations over the kidnapping and the release of as many as 12 imprisoned rebels from various factions.