Posted on 05/02/2009 8:33:27 AM PDT by Joiseydude
CALEXICO, Calif. — A food distribution company in Calexico is recalling candy imported from Mexico because it contains high levels of lead.
King Midas Inc. said Friday it is warning stores to stop selling Hola Pop, a caramel lollipop with a salted apricot in the center. The candy also comes in other fruit flavors.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
China, Mexico.... Global Trade is the answer.
Candy from mexico has been re called before.
The Orange County Register did a huge expose of this problem. The lead levels of candy from Mexico have been huge and will cause a lot of health problems for people in this country who are not aware of the problem and who already have increased dangerous levels of lead in their systems.
This isn't so much about product coming from one location or another, but companies taking shortcuts with their product in order to save a buck at the expense of the consumer.
The management of the importer (or distributor) should be subject to criminal proceedings, not just civil fines. Throw a few of these bozos importing tainted product (because it's cheaper to ignore testing or provide adequate oversight of their own suppliers) into Federal pound-me-in-the-*ss prison and I bet we'll see the issue pretty much gone economy-wide.
Essentially, someone decided it was better for themselves to compromise their own product's safety to make a few more dollars.
>>>>> Essentially, someone decided it was better for themselves to compromise their own product’s safety to make a few more dollars. <<<<<<
Wait until Americans discover that 90 percent of their vitamins (and vitamin ingredients) are sourced from China.
http://www.alibaba.com/catalogs/160417/Vitamins_Amino_Acids_and_Coenzymes.html
The last 2 years I worked for a major C store chain the amount of Mexican candy on display increased with every delivery period. Read the labels, Folks!
So the government should force importers and distributors to test any food products they handle?
Many of Hershey’s products are now made in Mexico.
http://www.buffalonews.com/businesstoday/businessfinance/story/585922.html
Is that why I have switched to Nestle?
I loved York Peppermint Patties, but they are now make in Mexico so I no longer eat them.
Yes. You sell it, you're responsible for failures in quality. You are the importer (the one who gets it made to your specs), it's your responsibility. It's called the buck stops here, and is a rather Conservative and moral position.
Are you suggesting that you can sell whatever you want with anything in it you want and that the seller should bear no repercussions?
I can see how lead gets into paint, or into a drug lord’s chest, but how does it get into candy?
If importers and distributors are forced to test all the products they import, then there would be very few imports. The place in the supply line to require testing is in the manufacturing. The restriction of imports of improperly regulated products is reasonable, but distributors cannot be expected to test the thousands of products they handle.
And the fact that 99.99% of those are safe and perfectly fine shows it's not some great Chinese Conspiracy to poison the US. Just like it's not some great Mexican Conspiracy to poison the US. It's companies contracting with manufacturers overseas who push to maximize their own profits at the expense of safety.
Yes, it costs money to have staff on-site to provide oversight, testing, and QC of your production. That's an extra cost that many would like to avoid. The problem is when you demand ever-cheaper manufacturing costs, and you fail to provide your own QC you end up with an epic fail.
There are three stages in manufacturing: design and engineering, production, and QC. You must own two of the three to guarantee a reliable, quality product that will succeed. You cannot outsource more than one area.
Unfortunately, the first and last - design/engineering and QC are the most expensive in terms of labor, because you need white collar/skilled folks who cost a lot. And manufacturing is being killed here in the US by our own Government (via regulation and taxation), so it becomes the obvious choice to outsource overseas.
To be successful with overseas manufacturing/production, you HAVE to own the first and last. You have to take an active role in the design and creation of your product (whether it is a TV, a pencil, or a vitamin tablet) and you need to make sure what is produced meets your own quality criteria. Otherwise you don't know what you're going to get, and you don't know if what was built was what you expected. You're selling a product that could be benign, could kill someone, it is entirely unknown.
Sony's not known for low quality; they do the design and QC themselves but have manufacturing done in China. Does that not show it is not some national conspiracy? Success by thousands of companies with millions of products points not to a failure of the business model or location of manufacturing, but that for some people greed and their own bottom line is more important than running an ethical company that really cares about its own customers.
If you're going to import a product that can potentially expose you to millions and millions in liability and potential criminal charges, then you should hire that $60K/year person and station them overseas to provide your OWN quality control/checks. You should demand regular measurements of your product with timely delivery of the results. You should set up a process where randomly selected products are sent to a 3rd party test lab to check them.
Does it raise cost? Yes, it does. It doesn't mean it cannot be done; I do it all the time. In fact, one of the services my own company provides is QC for factories in China. We have staff in China who work for us. They will go to the factories building our client's products, and they will perform QC functions, or will pull sample products themselves (even sub-assemblies from the production line and stores) to test at a 3rd party lab.
Quality costs. Companies need to understand that. Building overseas is no excuse to forgo quality, and it darn sure does NOT indicate some grand national conspiracy to poison the US.
To spot check children's shoes for lead, for example (what one of my clients gets made in China), we have a staff member go to the factory at the beginning of each production run. He takes 100 pieces at random - individual parts, finished shoes, packages, whatever catches his eye - and takes them to an independent lab for lead testing. If ANY part fails the lead check, the entire production run is scrapped.
Guess what - not a single piece has failed! We told the manufacturer right up front what the terms were, and we wrote it into each and every purchase order. The shoes do cost my client an extra $0.04 each (about $4000 to test, $100K per order), but he doesn't have to worry about it here in the US where there are penalties for lead content in children's clothing.
QC can be done, and if you're not willing to guarantee a minimum expected level of quality (namely, a food should not kill me if I'm not allergic to it) then you deserve any and all penalties that can be brought by the law.
Poor QC shows a lack of ethics and pride when a company is willing to forgo their own quality standards in the fight for a buck.
If you can’t provide the same level of control over your overseas factories as American companies are required to provide in their factories, then we don’t want your steenkin’ imports.
I’m all for quality control and accountability. I just think that it’s not reasonable to expect distributors to do the testing, any more than it would be reasonable to expect the freight carriers to test the products they carry, or retailers, etc.
see #19
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