President Bush’s appointment of a cabinet-level panel that will look for ways to improve the safety of imported food and other products is welcome recognition of a dangerous situation.
But the emphasis on doing it with “existing resources” may hinder the effort from the start since a major hole in the food safety net is the Food and Drug Administration’s inability to inspect a reasonable percentage of imports, which have been increasing exponentially.
The news in recent months has been replete with stories of poisonous pet food, imported toy trains coated with dangerous lead-based paint and toothpaste tainted with chemicals typically found in antifreeze.
Imports this year are four times what they were in 1996, according to a New York Times story.
However, inspections haven’t kept pace. Last year, inspectors looked at only 20,662 shipments out of 8.9 million arriving at American ports. And while the FDA’s overall budget has been increasing, inspector staff levels have decreased to 2002 levels.
That’s not to say the president’s newly-created Working Group on Import Safety, which has 60 days to develop plans to improve safety, is for naught. Panel members such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson surely have ideas about how to pressure importing countries diplomatically and financially to police the products they send to the United States.
Though the administration took pains Wednesday to say the step wasn’t aimed specifically at China, the third largest exporter to the U.S., many of the recent tainted products have come from there and efforts to protect the American food supply must focus heavily on that country.
Meanwhile, Congress has been holding hearings on the issue and members are mulling over measures that would direct additional resources to the FDA, which clearly are needed, or would give the agency broader regulatory powers. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has proposed importers pay a fee that would finance the hiring of more inspectors and creation of new technology that would make food safer.
As globalization changes the makeup of the food and goods consumed by Americans, our government must act to ensure their safety.
The president’s panel is a good step, but it must not be the only one.
