Posted on 07/30/2007 10:13:09 AM PDT by Kaput
Hidden Import Dangers by: Bethany Stotts, July 26, 2007
In the last few months, a series of reports about the looming dangers of products from Communist China has sparked a public outcry against compromised foreign safety standards. Families at home now wonder whether the fish they eat will give them cancer, whether their medications contain poison, and whether it is safe to drive before buying new tires. With the revelation that 1.5 million Tommy the Train toys have been recalled because of lead-based paint, parents have realized that even their children are not safe from these hidden dangers. On July 18, 2007, Caroline DeWaal, Director of Food Safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, testified that over 80% of consumers now believe that the "Made in China" label indicates that goods "may be contaminated."
It is surprising that this issue has only recently been swept into the public eye, given the 2006 FDA restrictions on Chinese eel imports. Caroline DeWaal asserts that the FDA has been monitoring this problem since 2001, and despite what she describes as untenable staff shortages the FDA identified leucomalachite green, an illegal microbial, in 91% of tested 2006 Chinese eels imports. According to Scott Gottlieb, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the FDA tested 89 Chinese seafood samples between October 2006 and May 2007, 25% of which contained “potentially unsafe residues” of illegal antibiotics and microbials. Yet the FDA only announced that it would block Chinese farm-raised eel, catfish, dace, shrimp, and basa on June 28, 2007.
The safety concerns have become so prevalent that all branches of the government are striving to reform America’s import process. President Bush founded a new import safety panel last Wednesday, July 18, to recommend new procedures through which the government can ensure the safety of international products. Congress is also deliberating several bills intended to remedy food insecurity, including the Imported Food Security Act of 2007, Human and Pet Food Safety Act, and the Safe Food Act of 2007. Consumers may soon benefit from increased transparency in 2008, when major provisions of the 2002 Farm Bill—including country-of-origin labeling—will go into effect.
A July 18th Senate subcommittee meeting on the topic proposed the following responses:
• Increase FDA funding and manpower at the border.
• Establish 3rd party safety certification agencies in foreign countries.
• Make every business in the supply chain legally responsible for the products they sell.
• Streamline the recall process.
• Make it illegal to sell defective goods.
Like Congress, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New York Times, and other media outlets have tried to limit the American fixation on Chinese import debacles by touting statistics about other countries’ abuses. For example, New York Times writers Andrew Martin and Griff Palmer noted that Mexico and India had a greater number of food shipments stopped by the FDA in the last twelve months. Other articles revealed that cantaloupe from Mexico is tainted with sewage, Mexican candy may contain lead, and black pepper from India is contaminated with salmonella.
While these statistics may be true, they downplay the recent role that rapidly deteriorating Chinese quality controls have had in recent months. China may have had a fewer number of stopped food shipments, but it had the largest number of food-related import violations in the last 12 months, totaling 1,901 rejected shipments. Mexico and India were close behind at 1,787 violations and 1,560 violations, respectively. When electronics and medical equipment are added to the number of FDA-blocked shipments, China remains in the lead at 2,723 shipments, with India at 2,260 and Mexico at 1, 876. Clearly, whether China remains in the lead depends on which type of violation is being measured, and this country retains a significant role in the problem regardless of statistical gerrymandering.
A large reason for the individual media attention that China has been receiving is because 60% of this year’s Consumer Protection Safety Commission product recalls involved Chinese-made goods. Up from 36% of CPSC recalls in 2000, the increasing proportion of Chinese recalls demonstrates that Chinese products are becoming more and more dangerous for the consumer.
Bethany Stotts is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, please e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
So I wonder when we are going to allow people to import low cost drugs from China?
We already are - they're in the fish.
And my wife and daughter b!tch when I ask where their purchases were made. I just can’t win.
According to the news yesterday, they're already here in the form of counterfeit drugs. They have been distributed through major pharmacy chains & may be responsible for deaths already in this country. Who knows how many people here have died from these drugs with no one questioning it because no one knew the drugs may have been counterfeit? But I guess as long as it saved a buck or two, it's alright.
“Bethany Stotts is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. “
Bethany needs to go back to training school and brush up on elementary statistics....:^)
These numbers are useless unless you know the volume of imports.... they should be quoted as percentage of shipments to put the problem in perspective...
Percentage of what? You don’t think they make Tommy the Train in the U.S. do you? I would guess that all of them are made in China.
You are already getting drugs from China, almost all aspirin and antibiotics come from China. So there is no quality control or cleanliness standards ... but notice no drop in price.. amazing !
Actually, since the FDA only inspects 1% of the volume of imports, it’s pretty much anyone’s guess as to how many products are defective or dangerous. Comparing the number of recalls to the volume of imports would be somewhat meaningless in situation where so few products are inspected. The problem is that we just don’t know.
Oh, and the problems now extend to organic food as well.
A recent article in businessweek:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_31/b4044062.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
“Percentage of what? You don’t think they make Tommy the Train in the U.S. do you? I would guess that all of them are made in China.”
And no, I don’t think that Tommy the Train is made in the US...:^)
...and I don’t trust the safety of stuff from India or Mexico either....
“Actually, since the FDA only inspects 1% of the volume of imports, it’s pretty much anyone’s guess as to how many products are defective or dangerous. Comparing the number of recalls to the volume of imports would be somewhat meaningless in situation where so few products are inspected. The problem is that we just don’t know.”
The FDA only places inspectors at 90 of over 300 ports. Of the 1% they inspect, only a fraction gets tested in a lab. And the FDA is scheduled to shut down operations at some of their heavier trafficked ports, further reducing the department’s ability to inspect some of the heavier inflows. Also, the FDA is allowing busineses to contract out inspections to private certification labs which have repeatedly demonstrated poor quality standards & a whopping huge conflict of interest.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/85/i30/8530notw8.html
A deeper look at public opinion polls reveals that most of them ARE shoddy and nonindicative, simply because it costs too much to run a scientific poll & release it in a relatively short amount of time. And what if your poll results show no statistically relavent conclusion? What then? “I fail to reject the null hypothesis” isn’t exactly breaking news, or accessible to the general public.
Other problems with surveys:
1.) sample size
about 1,000 participants is usually the most cost effective method.
however: what about the phrasing of the question? Does it push a left or right agenda, or infer a value judgment between 2 parties? If the poll is over the phone, does the speaker’s tone of voice imply which answer you should choose? If it does, this is known as a “push poll,” and is regularly used by campaigns to smear the opposition.
Most professional survey firms hire staff who have no accent and no political knowledge, so that their tone of voice does not influence survey outcomes. This type of professionality does not necessarily extend to newspapers or politically active think tanks.
Even ruling out interviewer bias, election polling has consistently shown a phenomenon known as “overreporting,” in which more voters claim to have voted- or voted for the winner- than the hard facts show. This is because respondees are more likely to choose the answer which they consider social acceptable, rather than one which reflects their true intentions or actions.
If you read the facts below, you will see that “statistics” are not the end-all route to knowledge. They can be just as fallible as purposive research, and have as many limitations as other scientific research.
And surveys (eg, polls) are even less reliable, because people lie, deny, and underestimate.
in the case of abortion... most women tend to underreport having abortions, because it has such social stigma attached. Medicaid recipient data is far more indicative in revealing the number of abortions by impoverished women than survey results.
Other problems with surveys (esp. polls):
sampling methods:
personal interviews= most reliable, most expensive
personal interviews allow researchers to gauge whether the recipient is blustering or avoiding the question. It also allows them to take variability of answers into account. However, it is so expensive that most researchers either use a small (and less indicative) sample size coupled with interviews, or avoid this method altogether.
phone interviews= somewhat reliable, less expensive
This is the conventional method for polling. However, it is
increasingly *less indicative* because pollers can only reach home phones. Now that consumers are switching over to cellphones instead of landlines, even this method has come into question.
Phone interviews allow a two-way conversation between the poller and the pollee. However, facial expressions are not available, and the researcher may have to throw out the survey if the interviewee hangs up the phone before the end of the survey.
Mailings: least reliable, least expensive.
In short, about 3-4% of mail surveys are returned. Who knows why a particular family returned the survey and another didn’t? Who knows if the intended person filled out the survey? Doesn’t the use of permanent residences bias results?
First of all, trial lawyers won’t sue Chinese firms.
Second, Chinese firms don’t carry product liability insurance.
Those two points, when combined, means that Americans have no recourse to tainted food and defective products.
After all, if you make something in the U.S., you’ll get sued, so businesses simply ship the work overseas and make it in China.
Once you make it in China, you form a Chinese corporation and then send the product to the U.S. (e.g. through a direct internet web page sale).
Now you don’t have to have insurance and you won’t get sued.
Gee, do you think that there is no concern in China about product quality when they can’t get sued and don’t have to worry about insurance rates?!
...And notice that U.S. politicians in both Parties are afraid to require Chinese firms to buy U.S. product liability insurance.
Won’t happen.
China is the ultimate tort reform. Executive “bad seeds” can go to China and run companies in the bad old ways again. The few good things won by U.S. unions are gone now...ignored and useless in China today.
Another example:
in a “bilateral” trade agreement, the US agreed to limit its tariff on Chinese cars to 2.5% while China imposed a 25% tarriff on US cars.
LOL. “China is the ultimate tort reform.”
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