Cite as: 518 U. S. 470 (1996)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
requirements are closely enough related to trigger preemption analysis. But the regulation's word "specific" does narrow the universe of federal requirements that the agency intends to displace at least some state law.
Insofar as there are any applicable FDA requirements here, those requirements, even if numerous, are not "specific" in any relevant sense. See ante, at 497-498, 501. Hence, as the FDA's above-quoted pre-emption rule tells us, the FDA does not intend these requirements to pre-empt the state requirements at issue here. At least in present circumstances, no law forces the FDA to make its requirements pre-emptive if it does not think it appropriate.
I cannot infer a contrary intent from Justice O'Connor's characterization of the federal standards applicable here as "comprehensive" and "extensive," post, at 513, 514, both because that characterization is questionable, see ante, at 497- 498, 501, and because this Court has previously said that it would "seldom infer, solely from the comprehensiveness of federal regulations, an intent to pre-empt in its entirety a field related to health and safety." Hillsborough, supra, at 718. It therefore seems to me that the better indicator of the FDA's intent is its pre-emption-related regulation. And that regulation's word "specific" would seem a reasonable exercise of the leeway that statutory language and practical administrative circumstance suggest Congress intended to grant to the agency.
Fourth, ordinary principles of "conflict" and "field" preemption point in the same direction. Those principles make clear that a federal requirement pre-empts a state requirement if (1) the state requirement actually conflicts with the federal requirement—either because compliance with both is impossible, Florida Lime & Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, 373 U. S. 132, 142-143 (1963), or because the state requirement "stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress," Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67 (1941)—or (2) the
507
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