Toxic Chickens Home To Roost

[marmar]

from TomPaine.com:



Toxic Chickens Home To Roost
Roy Ulrich
September 18, 2007


Roy Ulrich is a public interest lawyer, consumer advocate, and public radio broadcaster who lives in Los Angeles.


"Government is not the solution to our problems. It’s the problem."
 —Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, 1981


Fast forward 26 years: The headlines read, "Lead Paint Found in Imported Toys." It's been easy to bash the Chinese and the toy industry for their failings. But missing in most accounts is the sorry state of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the federal agency charged with the mission of warning consumers about potentially defective products.

The budget for the agency is a paltry $62 million this year though the industry it supposedly regulates sells $1.4 trillion annually. In the 1970's the agency had almost 1,000 employees. Now there are 420, 81 of whom are field inspectors. At the port in Long Beach, Calif., sits a single inspector whose impossible job it is to spot check incoming overseas shipments. The agency employs a single full-time toy tester at its cramped, poorly lit laboratory in Gaithersburg, Md., for the whole country. Astonishingly, by law, it can mandate safety standards only after voluntary measures have failed.

Six years ago, 100 people died in the wake of accidents caused by faulty Ford Explorer tires manufactured by Firestone/Bridgestone. Since 1980, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration —the federal agency responsible for overseeing traffic safety—has seen its budget decline by 36 percent in real terms to $392 million. During the same time frame, the NHTSA rule-making staff has shrunk from 103 people to 62.

Calls from consumer advocates to give the agency broader recall authority have been met by stone silence in Congress where, until recently, members often sided with the auto industry in its regulatory battles with the NHTSA. Nor are auto or tire companies required by law to report known defects to the federal government. Can there be any doubt that the granting of stricter regulatory authority to the NHTSA would have saved lives in this case? Just how many lives are open to question.

And it’s not just about toy and auto safety. It’s about the food we eat. In 1997, a deadly strain of E. coli bacteria was making people seriously ill in the Midwest. The cause was traced to a meat processing plant owned by Hudson Foods in Nebraska. The company voluntarily recalled 25 million pounds of potentially deadly hamburger meat. I say “voluntarily recalled” because the U.S. Department of Agriculture to this day lacks the authority to order a recall and close offending plants. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/09/18/toxic_chickens_home_to_roost.php