| | Statement of Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives, Consumers Union, Yonkers, New York Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Oversight
of the House Committee on Ways and Means October 04, 2007
Thank you for the opportunity to
testify today on what has become a serious crisis in import safety. My name is
Jean Halloran and I am Director of Food Policy Initiatives for Consumers Union, non-profit publisher of
Consumer Reports.
Almost daily, we are hearing new
reports of safety problems with imported food, toys, cribs and other consumer
products. In the spring, we discovered that pet food imported from China contained wheat flour that was contaminated with melamine. According to one
veterinarian website, thousands of pets may have died as a result. In June, the FDA put five types of farmed-raised fish and seafood from China under a “detain and test” order, due to repeated findings that the fish contained chemicals
banned from seafood in the United States.
Over the summer, more than 20
million toys manufactured in China were recalled because of lead paint and
other hazards, despite the fact that lead paint was banned on toys in the U.S. thirty years ago.
Just last week, one million cribs made in China were recalled due to design and
construction defects that could cause babies to strangle. The cribs are
believed responsible for the deaths of two infants.
This raises the obvious question,
how did we get in this situation? Why do we suddenly seem to be inundated with
unsafe and substandard products? Many of the most well publicized examples are
coming from China, but they are not the only source. In 2003, 555 people
became sick and at least 3 died from hepatitis A in green onions imported from Mexico.
There have also been recalls of millions of pieces of children’s jewelry made
in India that contained large amounts of lead.
We see two causes of the problem.
One is that two of the most important federal agencies that the public relies
on to ensure that everything in our marketplace is safe—the Food and Drug
Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission-- have not kept up
with the globalization of the marketplace. In fact, while new demands on their
expertise have arisen, these agencies have experienced budget cutbacks. In
addition, Customs and Border Protection, which also plays an extremely
important role, is not being utilized in the best possible way to address
threats to consumer safety.
The second problem lies with the
direction that Congress and the Executive Branch have given to our trade
policy, which has largely ignored the problems of unsafe and hazardous imported
products. I would like to discuss both of these problems and how we can remedy
them.
First, in recent years, imports
have skyrocketed, especially from China. The value of all imports increased by
67 percent between 2000 and 2006.
This has proceeded to such an extent that now 80 percent of all toys sold in
the United States are imported from China.
Likewise, 83 percent of the seafood we eat is imported, 21 percent of that
total from China, much of the rest from other developing countries in Asia and Latin America.
Of all the food we consume, 13 percent is imported.
While these imports pose new safety
challenges to both importers and all regulatory agencies, FDA and CPSC, in
particular, have not kept pace with this new challenge. In fact, quite the
opposite. Congress has repeatedly cut the budget of the CPSC so that it now
has half the number of employees it had when it opened in 1978. It now has 15
inspectors to police the millions of toys and consumer products coming into the
country at hundreds of entry points. And, according to the New York Times , it
has only one full-time toy tester, named Bob.
The FDA is equally hamstrung. Today,
it inspects less than one percent of food imports entering the country. There
are over 300 ports (many landlocked) where food can enter. . At the peak of
its funding, there were FDA inspectors stationed at only 90 of them, and the
number of inspectors has dropped since then.
This has led to a phenomenon known as “port shopping.” Indeed, if a shipment
of seafood is rejected by FDA inspectors at one port because it has begun to
decompose, there is nothing at all to prevent the importer from trying another
port where FDA simply may not be present.
In the absence of adequate FDA and
CPSC capacity, Customs and Border Protection becomes the fallback consumer
protection agency at the borders. In fact, when FDA issued its “detain and
test” order for Chinese seafood in June, CPB appeared with FDA to discuss how
it would be implemented. Until recently, however, little was being done to coordinate
these fragmented inspection efforts, or to determine if there could be
efficiencies developed through better coordination and communication. The
Report to the President of the Interagency Working Group on Import Safety
identified “siloed systems” and in particular the inability of CPB and USDA’s
data bases on imports to connect with each other, as problems that needed to be
addressed.
It is essential that we prevent
chemical and nuclear threats that might be hidden in shipments coming across
our borders. But food can also be a vehicle for doing serious damage to the
health of the U.S. population. So far, the health threats we have found in
food seem to be the result of neglect, carelessness, or greed. But deliberate
contamination could also occur. The CPB, FDA, CPSC, and the U.S. Dept of
Agriculture must coordinate better, and get the resources they need to protect
the borders.
Overall, Consumers Union recommends
that Congress consider three steps to address these problems:
1. Mandate
a major increase in the border inspection staffs at both CPSC and FDA. One way
to raise the funds to cover this would be through user fees on imports.
2. Require
FDA and CPSC to establish federally supervised systems for independent third
party certification of imports, and require that those imports be certified to
meet U.S. safety standards.
3. Give
USDA and FDA explicit authority to recall contaminated food; currently all
recalls are voluntary.
The second major cause of the
import problems we are currently seeing lies with our trade policy. I also sit
on the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and
Trade, and work closely with sister consumer organizations in other countries
who belong to Consumers International. For many years, U.S. trade policy, at the direction of Congress and the Executive Branch, has proceeded
with blinders on towards just one goal—that of gaining U.S. companies access to markets in other countries—with little consideration to the impact
on the domestic economy or marketplace. That approach to trade policy needs to
change. Our current trade policy has had profound effects on life in the United States. Our toy manufacturing industry, for example, has disappeared. Congress has
begun to think about looking at the impact of trade agreements on labor
standards and the environment. We must also, however, look at how trade
agreements affect the safety of the products we give to our children, eat for
breakfast, feed our dogs and cats, and sleep on. Unless we look more closely at
the impact our trade policy has on safety issues, our quality and standard of
living will decrease, rather than increase as it can and should do. Our trade
policy has to take a more holistic approach.
Consumers Union would like to make
several recommendations as a way to begin to improve our trade policy.
1. A
simple, yet important change would be to broaden the many advisory committees
that provide the marching instructions to the US Trade Representative, to
include representatives of consumer, environment, and labor organizations and
the general public. Currently those advisory committees include only
representatives of the business community. A bill to do this, HR 3204 was
recently introduced by Representative Chris Van Hollen and was referred to this
committee .
2. Congress
should examine the four pending trade agreement, past trade agreements, and any
new agreements negotiated in the future to determine whether they adequately
protect the right of federal, state and local governments to protect the safety
of their citizens. One type of provision that should not be included in such
agreements is the “Chapter11” agreement that is part of NAFTA. This provision
allows companies who invest in another country, and whose profits are damaged
by a foreign regulatory action, to be compensated for their loss. This
probably sounded good in the context of possible nationalization of American
investments in telecom infrastructure or oil fields in foreign countries.
However, one must always consider how such provisions will work when they are
turned around and applied at home. A Canadian company operating funeral
parlors in Mississippi sought compensation under NAFTA when new state
regulatory actions forced it to end certain anti-competitive and predatory
business practices. The case was dismissed, but only because the company had
reorganized as a US corporation, and was thus no longer eligible for a claim as
a foreign investor.
Our negotiators should request from others only those things we would be happy
to have others requested from us.
3. Our
trade policy and our trade negotiators in the State Dept , USTR, and U.S. Dept
of Agriculture, should be directed by Congress to give attention not just to
copyright and counterfeiting problems that cut into US company profits, but
also to the counterfeiting of safety-related labeling. I have been at many
meetings where I have heard how hard the U.S. is working to address exporter’s
problems with counterfeit CDs in foreign countries. We also think
counterfeiting of consumer products is a problem. However I have never heard much
talk about working hard to address the problem of counterfeiting of the
Underwriters Laboratory logo. This is an extremely serious safety problem, one
that can result in serious injury or death to a consumer who buys a defective
electrical product. Yet although there are numerous State Dept and USTR
initiatives on intellectual property, and enforcement of copyright related to
movies and CDs, I am aware of no such efforts on this important safety-related
counterfeiting issue.
4. Congress
should ensure that where trade negotiators seek harmonization of standards,
they seek to harmonize up, and not down. Where our standards are lower than
another country’s, we should always see how we can improve, not try to force or
encourage others to reduce their protection. For example, the U.S. has been involved in a protracted trade dispute with South Korea and Japan about exports of our beef. Japan has stricter standards than we do about testing for
mad cow disease—every animal over the age of twenty months is required to be
tested at slaughter. We only test about a tenth of a percent of U.S. cattle that die or are slaughtered. One simple solution to our trade problem with Japan would have been to allow U.S. companies who export to Japan to test the cows they
slaughter for that market. However, the USDA has actually forbidden one
company, Creekstone, from taking that step.
Indeed, the government appears to be trying to deepen the divide between us and
Japan by opening our border further to Canadian cattle and beef, which have
had significantly more cases of mad cow disease than U.S. cattle.
To us this seems like the wrong approach to solving trade disputes.
5. Congress
should investigate whether WTO rules may hamper the ability of federal
regulatory agencies to protect the public, and if so, address the issue. It is
important that all trade agreements, and our trade policy in general, allows
for targeted, risk-based enforcement actions against products from particular
countries when warranted. WTO trade rules in general provide that one country
cannot impose stricter, or differing safety standards on products of other
countries than it imposes on its domestic production. In the area of food
safety, this may pose a number of dilemmas. As noted previously, our agencies
are seriously understaffed. If agencies see a greater incidence of violations
in products from a particular area—as they recently did with seafood from China—it is important that they continue to be able to target such problem areas for
increased inspection and testing. In addition, many US food regulations are
actually in the form of guidance, which is not mandatory, but which is widely
followed by US industry nevertheless. It may be necessary for such guidance
to become regulation, so that other countries are obligated to conform under
WTO rules.
In sum, in recent years, while
imports have ballooned, regulatory capacity has shrunk. Our regulatory
capacity must be overhauled to meet the import challenge. In addition, our
trade policy must be more holistic, and trade agreements must be designed with
protection of product safety in mind. Thanks you for considering these issues.
Dahlberg, Carrie Peyton, “Vets Survey: Pet Deaths Have Soared” Sacramento Bee, April 10, 2007.
FDA News, “FDA Detains Imports of Farm-Raised Chinese Seafood; Products Have
Repeatedly Contained Potentially Harmful Residues,” June 28, 2007.
Newman, Andrew Adam, “What’s a Parent to Do?” The New York Times, September 29, 2007, p. C1.
News from CPSC, “About 1 Million Simplicity Cribs Recalled Due To Failures
Resulting in Infant Deaths”, September 21, 2007.
V Dato et al., Hepatitis A Outbreak Associated with Green Onions at a
Restaurant—Monaca, Pennsylvania, 2003, 52 MMWR 1155-57 (2003)
News from CPSC, “CPSC Announces Recall of Metal Toy Jewelry Sold in Vending
Machines,” March 1, 2006.
Interagency Working Group on Import Safety, Protecting American Consumers
Every Step of the Way, September 10, 2007.
Wenske, Paul, “Toy recalls fuel criticism of consumer safety agency,” Kansas City Star, August 15, 2007.
Food and Water Watch, Import Alert, July 2007, available at
www.foodandwaterwatch.org.
Bridges, A. “Imported food rarely inspected,” USA Today, April 16, 2007.
Lipton, Eric, “Safety Agency Faces Scrutiny Amid Changes”, New York Times,
September 2, 2007.
Testimony of Caroline Smith DeWaal, House Energy and Commerce Committee,
Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations, Import Inspection Failures and
What Must Be Done, July 17, 2007.
Interagency Working Group on Import Safety, Protecting American Consumers
Every Step of the Way, September 10, 2007.
Public Citizen, NAFTA’s Threat to Sovereignty and Democracy: The Record of
NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Cases 1994-2005, February 2005.
Reynolds, George, “Private BSE Testing on Hold Following Appeal,” Food
Production Daily-USA, May 31, 2007.
Consumers Union News Release,” Consumers Union Calls on USDA to Continue Ban on
Beef from Canada,” March 12, 2007, available at www.consumersunion.org.
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