Common Dreams: Chinese Imports Highlight Woeful State of Consumer Safety

[Blue State Blues]

Chinese Imports Highlight Woeful State of Consumer Safety
CommonDreams.org
by Ralph Nader

No new information if you've followed the various import contamination stories, but a handy summary.

It has been a long time coming, but now the mass media and even the “look-the-other-way” Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are focusing on a stream of Chinese imports that are contaminated or defective.

After years of warnings about farm-raised seafood imports from the Chinese mainland, the FDA’s Dr. David Acheson, in charge of food protection, said: “There’s been a continued pattern of violations with no signs of abatement.” So, finally, the FDA in late June blocked the sale of shrimp, frozen eel, catfish, basa and dace. The reasons included carcinogens and too many antibiotic residues.

<snip>

China produces products in a horrifically polluted environment-of the water, air and soil. Industrial chemicals, farm run-offs, mountains of toxic waste are alarming Beijing for both domestic consumption as well as foreign trade reasons. Despite loud proclamations of forthcoming action, the Chinese government has waited too long, allowed too much corruption and lax enforcement, and condoned a huge industry in exported counterfeit goods where anything goes.

Although country-of-origin legislation passed Congress in 2002, Mr. Bush-obsessed by the costly Iraq war and indentured to large corporate importers-did not push his Republicans in Congress to provide funds for enforcement. Instead, the president has signed into law delays in the labeling rule. Therefore, except for the required labeling of seafood from foreign countries (consumers take note), all other food in your supermarket is not required to have a label of the country that exported it. It is the majority Democrats’ job now to compel mandatory labeling of all imported foods.

The article doesn't call for specific action other than this, "... the fundamental responsibility here is with Beijing and Washington when careless or criminal companies fail their responsibilities. There needs to be a consumer safety treaty between the two countries where consumer needs are supreme."

Full text here:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/09/2409/

[illinoisprogressive]

1. consumer safety goes against the ideas of conservatives who have been running this place.

they are systematically dismantling all the programs for oversight or government help. All the programs have been raped.