Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff and Health and Human Services Secretary Leavitt at a Press Roundtable on Import Safety

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  I think the format is I have a few remarks, and then Secretary Chertoff will have some remarks.  And then we'd be very pleased to be responsive to your inquiries. 

Obviously the Department of Homeland Security plays an important role in ensuring that products that enter the United States -- we're very pleased that, consequently, that the Secretary has been able to be with us. 

About a month ago, I think most of you are aware, the President asked the federal government in total to look at how we can enhance the safety of imports.  And they form the Interagency Import Safety Working Group.  And it's made up of 12 federal agencies, most of whom are Cabinet level, but a couple --the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Council and so forth are exceptions to that. 

The President appointed me to chair the group, and it's been my job to coordinate the work of the 12 agencies to make sure that we examine the issues from all angles and report back to the President our findings. 

We assembled teams that are now working in each of the 12 relevant agencies or departments.  Their task is to inventory authorities, to look for places where improvement was possible.  They will begin to provide that information to us generally, and then we'll get together as a working group on a more frequent basis after the teams have been working. 

Today marks the halfway point toward the due date that we were given by the President, and so I just wanted to update you with our work. 

In the past two weeks, I've been in 14 cities to see firsthand how we can safeguard imported products for American consumers.  I began fact finding in Texas at a large produce processing plant where I saw how quality assurance measures are used to make sure that the food we have on our dinner table is safe. 

I visited ports in the South and in the West and in the East, up and down the various seaboards.  I've been at Customs checkpoints to see how food and medicine and other products come into the country.  I've had a chance to see how the Customs and Border Protection people from HHS work very closely with those from FDA and those with the USDA and a number of other federal agencies and state agencies. 

I think that's one of the things that strikes one as you begin to move in this circle is to see how much collaboration is necessary literally at the dockside where the truck comes across the bridge and where the mail enters the country to make the system work. 

I toured produce and seafood departments in grocery stores and in wholesalers to see how the food supply is inspected and protected.  I went to O'Hare airport, at their postal facility.  I went to Fed-Ex to see the distribution center they have in Memphis, and again to see Customs and Border Protection people working side by side with FDA, USDA and the private sector who are involved in the shipping of so much commerce.  At O'Hare, inspectors handle 100,000 pieces of mail every day, from all over the world.  Fed-Ex handles 3.3 million packages a day.  You can imagine the extraordinary integration and the mechanisms that have to take place, not just in terms of machines but people.  This is not just about the mechanics, but it's about the sociology and coordination that takes place to assure the safety of legal products that are coming into this country and to identify and to intercept those that are illegal. 

At O'Hare, I saw a glass bead bracelet that was used to cover up the illegal importation of medication.  They opened the box and there was just a little glass set of beads, but when you lifted it up, there was medication that had clearly been made in somebody's warehouse or garage. 

At the Port of Oakland, I saw a demonstration of a new x-ray spectrometer that we now use to screen food and other products.  This is a new device that the FDA more efficiently uses to identify arsenic and lead and other toxic metals in the field.  I want that to be demonstrated for you today, but I do want to emphasize how important we're finding these field diagnostics to be, where rather than taking a piece of a product and having to ship it to a lab, literally being able to do it right on the spot, how quickly and efficient that is. 

In fact, David Anderson is here from FDA.  David, come on over and show them your gadget.  It's quite impressive. 

MR. ANDERSON:  I can show you what it looks like.  It does emit x-rays when it's running -- not now -- so I'm going to do the analysis over here.  (Laughter.)  Here's what it looks like -- it really is a minimal dose, but if you use them a lot -- 

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  Don't point it at me.  (Laughter.) 

MR. ANDERSON:  The device is set -- I can set any time for analysis.  Typically it will be 30 seconds or less.  I've set up for 15 seconds.  And it has a pocket PC here, and once you do the analysis, the analytical results show right up.  And because most inspectors are skeptical, there's a way to review the spectrum right on the screen so they can confirm what they're finding.  

And the best thing to do is do a demo.  What I have is a couple bottles of sports drink.  I want to emphasize, we've never found any sports drinks that are contaminated, and I've purposely spiked one just to show you the effectiveness of this. 

The inspector simply has to point and shoot, typically just going like this.  There's a dead-man switch on the trigger, so if you let go, it shuts the x-ray tube off.  While it's flashing the x-rays are being emitted.  And I'm doing the regular unopened bottle, like right off the shelf at a store first.  And when the test is complete -- I don't know if you can see it, it's a small screen -- a spectrum will come up.  This is an x-ray spectrum, you probably want to look at the results.  And essentially everything that comes up is detection limits, like less than 10 mercury, less than 9 lead.  And again, I'd emphasize that we'd probably run a little longer.  If we thought we saw something, we'd run it again with longer time, just to make sure that we're seeing what we're seeing.                             

But essentially, it comes up, you see nothing, which you would hope to see (inaudible) the spectrum.  And this is all background information.  It's kind of hard to show everyone on such a small screen.  But anyway, that's what it looks like. 

In contrast, if we run something that's spiked, at a level of about 20 ppm or 22 micrograms per milliliter of the same thing, these are well below toxic levels, unless you drank an awful lot of this stuff every day.  But just to show that effectively, at a short period of time -- again, it's going to be difficult to see -- but the results give me the number of, like, 50 micrograms of mercury, 20 micrograms of arsenic, 16 micrograms of lead.  It's not quantitative.  These numbers aren't quantitative; we know how to convert them to get the actual numbers.  In viewing the spectrum, it's very easy for an inspector to tell the difference between this and a blank.  There really are lines that represent the different elements that are present, and they can be displayed manually.  Since we know where all these lines are, it will -- you can run them up to tell you exactly which element is present.  I'm having trouble with my film here.  I'm almost done. 

Anyway, the lines and their elements are displayed, so that it tells the inspector exactly what's there.  And this has been applied not just to liquids, but also to foods, ceramics, lead-soldering cans.  Just about any heavy element or toxic element can be analyzed with this instrument on almost any commodity. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Thank you, David.  I'd like to give you just a few of my personal reactions to what I've seen in the last two weeks in 14 cities all over the country at various aspects of this.  The first thing that strikes me, strikes anyone, is just the vastness and the scale of what we're talking about.  Giant container ships, moving containers as fast as they can be unloaded, happening simultaneously in dozens of different ports all over the country.  

When I was in basic training, I did my share of KP.  There was a mess hall at Fort Sill that had 3,000 people fed every meal.  And I remember walking into a warehouse thinking how much food -- I mean, this place was just stacked with food, and it would empty out and fill up every day.  What I've seen in the last two weeks is what it takes to load up and empty out the American pantry every day for 300 million people.  And it is just overwhelming the amount that comes into our country. 

What I learned from that is the option of inspecting everything is eliminated by the scope and vastness of the amount.  And we expect that amount will increase.  I'm told by the shipping industry, those that I saw along the way, that we could see as much as three times the level of import by 2015 as we have today. 

So, two things that come from that.  One is the kind of field diagnostic that David has shown speeding up and making more efficient the way we test.  That's one thing.  But the more important lesson that I have learned is that the way we assure food and medicine and other products are safe is that you have to build quality and safety into the process at every step of the way.  

I mentioned this lettuce processing plant.  I'm standing there next to the guy who runs the place, and he said, the motto in the lettuce industry is, "know your grower."  What do you mean by that?  He said, I want to know where that lettuce was planted; I want to know what the quality of the water was, wherever it was; I want to know the nutrients that were put on it; I want to know who picked it; I want to know what they did with it.  I want to know every step of the process, and I want to inspect along the way.  

I met a seafood processor.  He said exactly the same thing:  I need to know where that was harvested; I need to know what they did with it.  To know that when I put it into a can or a package that it is safe, I need to know what's been built into it. 

So the key to continued improvement here is building quality into the processes.  It becomes clear to me that we must say to those who would import goods into our country that if you desire to produce goods for American consumers, you need to meet the expectations of quality and safety that American consumers have. 

And the way we will achieve that is to then begin to work with them to develop standards so they know what American standards are, and that we are monitoring their inspection processes so that we have the trust and confidence that they are being -- they are meeting those expectations. 

I will just -- I know that Michael will have other things to mention, but let me just say I've also come to understand what an inspector, one of your Customs and Border Patrol people told me -- in fact, several did -- one fellow said, there's so much here that our job cannot be to inspect everything; it's first to shrink the haystack, he said, so that the needle becomes more evident.  We need to know what to look for, using technology.  

So what I've learned is that we don't physically crack open the crate and look at every bottle, but we are getting better and better at knowing what to look at.  And using interoperable systems in the future, we can become even better than we are now. 

So those are just some observations, and I'll have a couple more things to say a little bit later about where we go from here with the working group.  But Michael, why don't you go ahead. 

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  Well, first of all, I want to thank Mike Leavitt for hosting me here, and also for his leadership with respect to our import safety working group. 

We've been participating through that group principally through our Office of Health Affairs, led by Jeff Runge, who just became the Director.  Many of you know him as our Chief Medical Officer.  We've participated with Customs and Border Protection, obviously, as well.  

And I thought what I would do, without duplicating what Secretary Leavitt said, is talk a little bit specifically about the role that we play at DHS with respect to import safety. 

There are really three major principles that we use in dealing with the issue of keeping out dangerous cargo.  And you'll have heard of these in the context of terrorism because we most often discuss this in the discussion about keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the country. 

But the truth is that the principles were originally developed as part of the more general Customs mission of protecting the country against dangerous goods that were health hazards or intellectual property that had been stolen or anything that shouldn't be in this country and has to pass through our seaports or our airports or our land ports. 

The three principles are:  partnership between government and the private sector; risk management, not risk elimination; and a layered approach to security.  And I think, as Mike Leavitt has explained it in kind of very concrete terms, it's easy to understand why we take the approach. 

First of all, partnership.  Obviously we don't have the intimate knowledge of what is in every shipment of the millions and millions of shipments that go around the globe every year.  That is the knowledge held by the shipper and the manufacturer and the person who is ultimately going to receive the shipment. 

So, just as the lettuce manufacturer or packager wants to know the grower, so we do want to know what we can about our traders, our shippers, our consignees, because, first of all, the more confidence we have in them, the more we can take that hay off the haystack, which is this principle of risk management.  And second, we can enlist them and leverage their rational self-interest in keeping things safe.  They don't want to see a lot of their shipments turned away at the border, and they certainly don't want the liability of having the consequences of a misbranded or an unhealthy shipment cause damage here.  So if we can engage them intelligently, they can do a fair amount of the work for us. 

And also we use a layered approach.  We try to recognize that no single mechanism is foolproof, and if we can build a series of layers through which a shipment has to pass, we've got a greater likelihood of avoiding human error or some other failing that occurs as a matter of any process, but we can minimize the extent to which that actually has a negative consequence. 

So we use those three principles as we work to keep dangerous products outside of our country. 

Let me give you some sense of the dimensions of the challenge that we face when you look at the total trade numbers.  In fiscal year 2006, the total value of America's imports were at nearly $2 trillion, and by the end of this fiscal year, it should be at $2.2 trillion.  And you can visualize, if you just go down to a port, just the stupendous number of containers and ships that are bringing every kind of product in, both finished products and products that will become finished in the United States.  It is a huge element of the American economy and a huge element of what is in every American's home.  And obviously, therefore, the safety and quality assurance becomes important. 

Another interesting fact is how much of our inspection and screening we push out overseas.  Now, first let me explain the difference between screening and inspection.  Screening is a process by which we have received information about every shipment that comes into the United States, which we get from the shipper and we get from the manufacturer and we get from the shipping line.  And what the information allows us to do is to triage, to determine what are the shipments that we want to look more closely at, that we actually want to physically inspect.  As Secretary Leavitt said, if you opened up every single shipment, it would be the end of our entirety of our importation and global trade, because we would literally have a line of container ships stretching from our ports all the way across the Atlantic and the Pacific; they wouldn't be getting in.  So that's unrealistic.  But screening allows us to do intelligent, risk-based focus on those kinds of shipments where we think there is a higher risk. 

And to extent we do this overseas -- and now 72 percent of all our physical container traffic is actually screened and, if necessary, inspected overseas through our Container Security Initiative -- that allows us to build our security capabilities way out into the global domain, even before shipments come into the United States. 

Our partnership with validated private sector shippers who agree to put security measures and safety measures into their own processes goes forward through our CTPAT program, and almost half of the import value of what came through the maritime domain into the U.S. this past year came through participants in that CTPAT program.  Those are basically trusted shippers.  And that's another way of taking some of that hay off the haystack. 

Let me give you some examples of what we've accomplished just recently.  You all know that earlier this month, the United Kingdom announced that they had found foot-and-mouth disease affecting cattle at three locations in Great Britain.  Immediately, in response to that threat, CBP put into effect protocols to prohibit the importation of British pork products.  And since August 4th, CBP has intercepted 17 cargo shipments of meat and animal products from the U.K. weighing more than 73,000 pounds.  These were discovered through some of the techniques I've talked about:  screening of the manifest, targeting based on intelligence and, to some extent, random examination as well. 

So that's one example of how we very quickly turned around a response to an emerging threat and implemented protocols in order to prevent these things from getting in. 

On a typical day, for example, CBP officers seize almost 4,500 prohibited meat, plant or animal products, including those infested with pests.  And just to give you some examples, again, last fiscal year, we seized 45 containers of Chinese poultry products.  We made the discovery through a random examination, but once we discovered a problem with these products, what we did is we now continue to target similar shipments for examination to see whether any of these products were infected with something that would be dangerous to bring into the country. 

In April of this year, we intercepted a shipment of wheat gluten that was contaminated with melamine, and then we were able to determine that the contamination was isolated to a small number of suppliers.  

At the land border, in January of this year, CBP agricultural specialists stopped 169 attempts to smuggle prohibited agricultural items across the Mexican border.  We seized over 3,000 plant items and 874 animal products and, of course, we issue penalties against violators.  So we do this not only at sea, but we do it at land as well.  And it's not only a matter of food, it's also a matter of other kinds of products, household products or toys or anything else that could come in and affect a consumer. 

Last month, we targeted an imported shipment of toothpaste, looking for the presence of diethylene glycol, or DRG.  And in the course of doing that targeting, although we didn't find DRG, we did find intercepted containers with counterfeit Colgate toothpaste, which, of course, is a theft of intellectual property.  And often, thefts of intellectual property and adulterated goods go hand in hand. 

Finally, of course, it's not just a question of intercepting, seizing and, if necessary, penalizing financially.  Sometimes we have to go further and punish people criminally if they're violating our laws, in terms of importation. 

Recently, following an ICE investigation, 18 individuals were indicted and they now face trial on racketeering charges for allegedly operating an illegal business selling illegal pharmaceuticals through a firm that was based in Costa Rica.  The company sold controlled and uncontrolled prescription drugs, as alleged in the indictment, through numerous affiliated websites to customers who didn't have prescriptions, even in instances where these drugs were potentially dangerous.  And so now, of course, because these are violations of our importation laws, they're criminal cases. 

Bottom line is, we are a large part of the tool set that supports Secretary Leavitt and the health authorities, Secretary Johanns and the agricultural authorities, and our entire array of regulatory authorities, all of whom are working to make sure that dangerous goods and products manufactured outside of the United States are not entering this country. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Let me just close up the remarks portion by saying we don't -- we can't find or resolve every problem within the 60-day period; that's not our goal.  But we can provide the President, in response to the executive order, a report that sets forth a strategic framework to promote import safety.  We'll be working over the next month to further organize this conversation, and then we'll provide this report and the strategic direction to the President within the 60-day period set forth in the executive order. 

Following the report, we plan to release a follow-up action plan in mid-November.  During this additional two-month period we'll continue to engage those that are involved in the import process, as well as the public, all departments that are involved in the working group will be talking to their various stakeholders, taking into account the feedback we received.  Then we will recommend specific actions that the federal government and all parties involved can take to enhance import safety at all levels. 

I want to thank Secretary Chertoff for coming today, and I think we'll both be responsive to your questions.                   

QUESTION:  Secretary Leavitt, there's a lot of consumer and industry groups that say that part of the strategic framework needs to be an increase in staffing and in legal authorities for the FDA.  What's your response to that?  How are you going to deal with those suggestions?  Because it seems you're going a different direction here. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  I'm not sure what you mean by a "different direction." 

QUESTION:  Well, are we talking about doing this within existing legal and fiscal resources, or are we talking about adding money to the budget? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  We have asked each of the operating departments or divisions to make recommendations as to what is necessary.  We'll make that as part of our report to the President.  From the FDA standpoint and from HHS as individual component part, we're looking at all those questions:  What are our resource needs?  What type of systems improvement do we need to have?  And can it be done within existing resources or not?  That will be part of our report. 

QUESTION:  So are you saying that you'd be open to, say, increasing the FDA budget by several hundred million dollars a year and hiring a few hundred additional, or a few thousand additional inspectors? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Sounds like I should have you write the report.  (Laughter.) 

QUESTION:  No, I'm asking you.  I'm just trying to ask it in a clear way. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Well, no, what I've said is what I mean.  We are asking the question, What is necessary to get this job done?  And nothing has been foreclosed. 

QUESTION:  You said you can't inspect everything, but are more inspectors needed?  Is enough being inspected? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Again, that's the same question.  We acknowledge that that's a question that needs to be dealt with, and that's part of our analysis. 

QUESTION:  Are you also looking at questions of reorganization, the fact that you have inspection duties split, let's say, between the FDA and USDA and what sometimes strikes people like the GAO as a nonsensical fashion?  Are you looking at those questions? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  All of those questions are matters that have been raised not just in our analysis, but for some time before, and there's a lot of different opinions about it.  What's evident to me in the field is that the system of collaboration between FDA, USDA, the Postal Service and the Customs and Border Patrol works remarkably well in the field.  Now, I will tell you that I have observed ways in which our systems can and should be improved.  And those who work with them are quick to point that out.  There are numerous systems; they don’t always connect with each other.  There are Border Patrol agents who have to remember six or seven passwords, and FDA people who have to remember the same because they're looking at separate systems.  So there are systems improvements that I believe will be part of our recommendations.  But they're all part of the same question:  What does it take to get this job done well, not just today -- there's an old hockey phrase that you want to "skate where the puck is going to be."  At every point in my fact finding I am informed that the pace of imports is increasing rapidly and that we need to be planning for as much as three times the amount of imports by 2015 that we have today.  So we need to be building a system that will accommodate substantially more. 

The world is changing.  It is not just the velocity of cargo, but it's the intensity of this interaction between various players.  So, again, it's not just more inspection -- we will not be able to inspect our way to food and import safety; it has to be a very important part of it, but in order to assure safety, it has to be built in at every point along the product chain.  I use the lettuce processor as an example.  That's true for every product.  We had a team go to China recently.  We have a group from China here.  That is all about helping them understand what the standards of the American consumers are and how they can meet them.  If they're going to ship into our -- if they're going to be importing -- rather, if they're going to be producing goods for American consumers, they need to meet our expectations of quality and safety. 

QUESTION:  This week's recall, the millions of children's toys, though, is a perfect example where quality was not built in from the get-go, from this paint that was supplied to the contract manufacturer.  So where is the government's role in that, if this isn't happening, if quality isn't being built in? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  That's a very good example of a failure.  And we need to learn what can be drawn from that experience, find out what happened and learn to avoid it. 

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  Let me say one of the greatest tools for driving quality in the world is going to be reputation.  And if firms develop reputations for low quality or unsafe products they will rapidly see the demand for their products fall.  So this is a case where you can't entirely rely on enlightened self-interest, but it would be a mistake to overlook the very powerful tool that the marketplace gives you in driving quality. 

I think a lesson that American firms have learned over the years -- which I suspect is being learned now around the world -- is that it doesn't take very much to trash a brand.  And once you've destroyed your brand, you've done yourself a lot of damage.  And I think that's a lesson that's getting increasing velocity these times. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  I stood at a wholesale fruit distributor in I think it was St. Louis.  And this was a guy who gets up at 1:30 every morning and goes out, gets the fruit, brings it back and has it there for the grocery stores to pick up.  He told me that the people from the grocery stores will help him unload the truck because they want to get the best apples.  And he said to me, if someone gets an apple from me that produces a complaint from a customer at a retail store, they'll go to another supplier to get their fruit.  And that's a very basic illustration of what countries are finding.  And countries are coming to understand that the world will punish -- the world market punishes those who do not meet standards of quality.  And it's instant. 

QUESTION:  Can I follow up on that, though?  Was there no -- was there nothing Customs and Border Patrol couldn’t have done -- the FDA, the USDA? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  I don’t know the specifics.  I don’t know the specifics of that case, and therefore it would -- 

QUESTION:  No, no, no, I'm talking about the toys. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  That's what I'm talking about.  I don’t know the specifics. 

QUESTION:  I mean, it's Mattel's failing?  It's the paint supplier? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  It would be too early to pass judgment on what broke down.  I'm sure analysis will be done both at Mattel and throughout the entire system.  But it's a good example of something we must learn. 

QUESTION:  Secretary Chertoff, can you talk a little bit about what kind of role you see for DHS in this evolving import safety plan, and whether it will be a new role for your agencies, or an expanded role for them? 

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  I think it's actually building upon a mission that many of the elements off the department have had actually going back decades, which is preserving the integrity of our borders against people who are trying to bring in things that can be dangerous to the American people.  Often that's an issue of pests or it could be a health issue -- for example, if you have foot-and-mouth disease or you have medfly.  Sometimes it's an issue of product safety.  I think that's probably a somewhat newer role.  And of course the one that gets the most visibility is a deliberate effort to bring in a weapon of some kind. 

But these are all dimensions of the same responsibility.  I think what we will look forward to doing is getting additional assistance, in terms of identifying emerging threats, things that might be coming in that are non-traditional safety and health threats.  We drive a lot of our activity using intelligence, which is really just a fancy way of saying information that allows us to make decisions about where we ought to focus for purposes of inspection. 

I think one of the things we're all looking at in the working group is to make sure that we are maximizing the exchange of information so that we can be most specific and most intelligent, in terms of the application of our resources against the literally millions and millions of shipments that come in every day. 

QUESTION:  But just to follow up on that, then what happens to the anti-terror mission?  Because after 9/11, the mission of a lot of your agencies shifted to anti-terrorism -- 

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  Actually, these missions complement each other, because what this is about is using information to assess risk and going after high-risk shipments.  And when you see something that's a high-risk shipment for any one of a number of reasons, and you do inspect it, or you do x-ray it, or you take some action, you may sometimes turn up something unexpected.  The risk may turn out to be not what you thought it would be.  But I would say that all these missions complement each other.  And the better we are at coordinating and working to detect these kinds of dangerous agents, the better our level of security is overall. 

QUESTION:  But you don’t see a risk that the anti-terror mission may be degraded if -- 

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  No, actually I think it enhances it. 

Let me give you an example.  Threats don't necessarily come with labels.  If someone were to send -- if we were on the lookout for contaminated food, that lookout is going to be pretty much the same, whether the contamination is an accidental thing that occurred in nature, or whether a terrorist contaminated it.  So we don’t want to actually have one completely separate set of tools when we're thinking terrorism and one completely separate set of tools when we're thinking natural occurrence.  Because often the threat doesn't come labeled as to whether it was intentional or unintentional. 

Our capabilities have to be all hazards, and I think it actually reinforces our ability to complete our mission. 

QUESTION:  A question, the working group is looking at long-term planning, and I know that you've said that this will be a continuous process.  But is there anything additional that you're considering for the short term to safeguard consumers?  There have been calls from some members of Congress to halt imports of food and toys from China. 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  I'll remind you that we recently did change the status for China on imports of certain seafood items.  That was done according to a normal process that's in place and according to authorities that already exist.  It's I think important to maintain the perspective that Americans do enjoy the safest food -- among the safest food supplies in the world.  Now, it isn't perfect and it must continue to get better because of the growing amount of imports. 

So our goal is to create both short-term and long-term continuous improvement.  I believe there will be short-term recommendations in the report.  But it will be oriented toward the long-term -- a long-term strategy that will produce continuous improvement. 

QUESTION:  Can I ask, are you going to be taking any trips overseas to, for example, China or any other countries as part of your fact-finding tour?

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Yes. 

QUESTION:  You are.  When is that going to happen and -- 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Well, I'll have -- a small portion of a trip I'm taking to Africa this week will be devoted to this subject, and then I'll be in China at least twice between now and the end of the year.  And I have had a team there recently and they'll be there again at the end of the month. 

I use that as an example.  We're working hard right now to assure we have understanding with the Chinese about what our expectations of quality and safety are, and what they must do to meet them.  We want the Chinese to be able to import products into our market and we want access to theirs, but we need to understand one another's expectation of quality and how to meet it.  We need to learn to have confidence in the process they use to assure quality of their exports, and they will undoubtedly have the same interests for us. 

QUESTION:  Secretary Leavitt, this week the Chinese government has said it's taking all kinds of new steps to prevent tainted products from entering the U.S.  How confident are you that the steps they say they're taking are going to be effective? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Well, I think the important point there is that the Chinese understand that we have expectations, and if they're going to import products into our country, they'll need to meet them.  And they're working hard to reorient their system to do that. 

We want to help them understand what our expectations are.  We started off conversations about toothpaste and fish and so forth in a discussion about what is the standard, what should the standard be.  We made very clear to them that if you're going to import products into the -- let me re-state that -- we made clear to them that if you're going to produce product for consumption by Americans, you need to meet our standards -- not theirs, ours.  And we want to make sure they understand what they are and that we have a process in place where we can be confident that the products that they are producing for American consumers meet those standards. 

QUESTION:  Do you think the steps that they've announced that they're taking are adequate? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Well, I'm not going to pass judgment on that today, but I think it's important to acknowledge they are taking steps and that it's clear that they view this as a serious matter and that they're moving aggressively to resolve it. 

QUESTION:  Secretary Leavitt, based on what you saw at the border, you know, the approach that Secretary Chertoff talked about, the risk-based approach, I know the FDA said they wanted to try it.  How likely do you think(inaudible)implemented at the border by the FDA? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Well, when you go to the borders and you see how this actually works, it becomes evident that this is a team approach, and I don’t mean that euphemistically; it literally is.  Every product that's shipped into the United States, as the Secretary points out, people have to give us advance notice that they're coming.  If it's a ship, they have to give us 24 hours; if it's a truck, it's got to be an hour's notice; if it's an airplane it's a different thing. 

And literally you can walk into a Customs and Border Patrol office and they'll have lists of things that are headed their way.  And they're gigantic lists and they're all looking for different things and they have a different expertise in each area.  And if the FDA sees something that they believe warrants checking, then they work with the Customs and Border Patrol to assure that it is checked.  And they at times literally go out, pull a box off the truck, open it up and look to see what's inside it. 

Other times they will see an inconsistency in the information and they'll ask for more information.  And they'll call those who are doing the shipping -- what becomes clear to me, the Secretary referred to it as the difference between screening and inspecting.  Everything gets looked at in one way or another.  It's either screening or inspecting.  But they're all looking at the same flow of information and they're working together with their particular expertise.  It's a very impressive working relationship that I've observed. 

QUESTION:  Secretary Chertoff, if Customs and Border Patrol then takes on a greater responsibility or greater role in looking for (inaudible) imports, will those employees require greater training?  I mean, do you intend to provide them greater training or the expertise? 

As Secretary Leavitt said, again, some of these FDA types are highly -- you know, have highly specific training.  

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:  I don’t think we're looking to substitute the expertise of the FDA -- although we do have in the agricultural area specially trained agricultural inspectors.  So I think it's a question, as Secretary Leavitt said, of a team approach, where having identified a shipment to be looked at -- sometimes it's perfectly evident that there's going to be a problem.  For example, if you have a shipment that's coming in that is manifested as sneakers, and there is something about the destination -- like, it's going to a restaurant -- and you go, there's something anomalous about this.  And you open it up and it's chicken, you don’t need to be a trained FDA or USDA person to know there's a problem there. 

When we do, however, get into testing, obviously we have a lab with lab experts to do testing, for example, of toothpaste.  Or when we deal with pests we have agricultural experts.  Or when we're dealing with issues involving health, we have the FDA present.  If it's a consumer product issue, that may be something that we'd send to the lab.  Not every inspector is going to be an expert in every particular specialty.  But what they do have is the general expertise necessary to identify, A, something that ought to be looked at by an expert, or, B, something that appears to be disguised as something else, which you can determine through some kind of anomaly or intelligence-based targeting.

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Can I just mention, we've talked a lot about prevention, but we also need to talk about intervention and response.  We had a recent food recall on chili.  I was in a large retailer or grocery store who happened to have one of those value cards, you know, you go into the grocery checkout and, do you have your XYZ card?  And you voluntarily give them information about you and then they scan your card and they give you a little bit of a discount. 

Well, what they also know is what food you buy.  And the retailer pointed out to me that when that recall occurred, they went back to their system and said, who bought XYZ chili during the months of this to this.  And they were able to find the consumers who actually purchased it. 

Now, when you start looking at the system of the future, you could see that if a consumer desired it -- and I mean to underline this as a voluntary matter -- if they desired it, it's quite possible that we could then begin, at some point, be able to see where things were produced, when they were picked, when they were processed, how they were shipped, the day they were processed, when they went to the grocery store, when it went to the distributor, when the person picked it up out of the grocery counter and took it home.  And if there's a problem you could electronically notify them:  You bought a can of X that had a problem on it and here's what you can do. 

So those are the kinds of things we're talking about in terms of the long-term, strategic vision here:  How do we have continuous improvement?  How do we use technology that will allow us to shrink that haystack so we're looking at the right thing, and maintain the flow of goods and the degree of safety and quality that Americans have come to expect. 

QUESTION:  Mr. Secretary, will your report address the budget issue? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  I'm sorry, what was it? 

QUESTION:  Will your report to the President address budget issues? 

SECRETARY LEAVITT:  Well, we will -- we're laying out a strategy, but there will be recommendations.  And obviously any of those recommendations have budgetary impacts, and so that will have to be considered.  The report itself will essentially lay out the strategy and some recommendations; the budget impacts will have to be listed in the budget.

Last revised: March 13, 2008