Defective Products
This year alone, the Food and Drug Administration has rejected more than 1,200 food exports from China into this country. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that China has generated two thirds of the 200 federal product recalls over the past year. However, many defective products, spoiled or contaminated, poisonous food shipments, simply go undetected, because a number of government agencies barely look at the boat loads of imports coming into our country.
The average American eats more than 200 pounds of imported food a year, but less than one percent of that is inspected. The average American home is filled with all kinds of goods from China, electronics, toys, TVs, other manufactured goods. Two thirds of all defective products found this year are imported, the largest number from China. Chinese food imports have tripled in the last decade. Almost none of which is inspected. The FDA at current levels has only enough man power to inspect in an estimated 40 of 361 ports.
More than 12 federal agencies inspect food operating under 35 different statutes and the rules often conflict. There are far too many agencies who share responsibility for this area, but they don't have enough funding.
USDA spending fell by $3 billion in 2007 and a 2006 report found only 15 percent of meat and poultry products were physically inspected. The Consumer Products Safety Commission is at all time low on staff at about 400 inspectors, about half of what they had in the 1980s.
A study found the FDA conducts about a third of the food inspections that it conducted just three years ago. The staff has been cut by about 500 jobs in the last six years and that makes little sense when we're facing growing volume of food imports,
It’s inconceivable that the FDA commissioner defends these cuts when they had to close seven out of 13 testing labs.
Commissioners are political appointees, and one thing that's important to the Bush regime is that politics counts, if you're running an agency. Sadly, the American consumer doesn't count.
The average American eats more than 200 pounds of imported food a year, but less than one percent of that is inspected. The average American home is filled with all kinds of goods from China, electronics, toys, TVs, other manufactured goods. Two thirds of all defective products found this year are imported, the largest number from China. Chinese food imports have tripled in the last decade. Almost none of which is inspected. The FDA at current levels has only enough man power to inspect in an estimated 40 of 361 ports.
More than 12 federal agencies inspect food operating under 35 different statutes and the rules often conflict. There are far too many agencies who share responsibility for this area, but they don't have enough funding.
USDA spending fell by $3 billion in 2007 and a 2006 report found only 15 percent of meat and poultry products were physically inspected. The Consumer Products Safety Commission is at all time low on staff at about 400 inspectors, about half of what they had in the 1980s.
A study found the FDA conducts about a third of the food inspections that it conducted just three years ago. The staff has been cut by about 500 jobs in the last six years and that makes little sense when we're facing growing volume of food imports,
It’s inconceivable that the FDA commissioner defends these cuts when they had to close seven out of 13 testing labs.
Commissioners are political appointees, and one thing that's important to the Bush regime is that politics counts, if you're running an agency. Sadly, the American consumer doesn't count.
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