China food safety woes show U.S. vulnerability

It's not what you eat but where it comes from

By Emre Peker, Medill News Service

Last Update: 12:01 AM ET Aug 29, 2007

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- First, back in 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned Chinese honey that was found to be contaminated with potentially harmful antibiotics. Then, in May of this year, the FDA traced a tainted supply of pet food to a Chinese supplier of wheat gluten. A month later, the agency added shrimp, catfish and eel to its growing list of Chinese imports that are threatening consumer safety.

Despite all these headlines and the ensuing flurry of finger-pointing on Capitol Hill, China is not the worst offender: It ranks third behind Mexico and India among countries whose products have been refused by the FDA, the government agency responsible for safeguarding about 80% of America's food supply. The Department of Agriculture is responsible for regulating the other 20%, specifically meat, poultry and processed egg products.

Federal agencies have the power to detain and ban imports, and lawmakers have promised to take action to better safeguard the country's food supply. However, the recent spate of Chinese food safety breaches highlights a new problem: As domestic consumption of imported food rises and foreign produce enters the U.S. from more than 300 ports, the FDA's capacity to monitor import safety simply cannot keep up.

"More and more of these imports are coming from developing nations, which don't have strong regulatory systems," said William Hubbard, former associate commissioner of the FDA, in an interview with MarketWatch. "Today you have food coming in huge volumes from hundreds of countries and many different types of food... The world has changed radically ... [and] these changes pose a problem."

America's reliance on imported food grew by more than 30% over 10 years, with imports reaching 15% of total food consumption in 2005, according to a July report by the Congressional Research Service. The report also showed the amount of Chinese food exports to the U.S. more than tripled from 1996 to 2006 to 1.8 million metric tons, enough food to feed about 2 million Americans for a whole year.

Meanwhile, the FDA, by its own numbers, inspected 1% or less of all incoming products in 2006, down from 1.7% in 1996.

Over the past year, the FDA has come under increased scrutiny for failing to protect the national food supply. Even before China made headlines with unsafe products, consumers also heard warnings about contamination of domestically produced spinach, lettuce and peanut butter, all of which were recalled.

"It's just suddenly coming to the fore that we have problems [and] that we have to drastically revise our systems," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union.

"Frankly, I don't want to rely on [self-policing] -- it only works when there is some enforcement."

Unsafe food takes a significant toll on the public. Each year, nearly 76 million Americans contract food-borne diseases, about 325,000 require hospitalization and about 5,000 die, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in February.

The GAO characterized the nation's food safety system as "high risk," noting "inconsistent oversight, ineffective coordination and inefficient use of resources." Adding to these problems are the changing nature of and the increasing dependence on food imports to the U.S.

Take, for example, wheat gluten, a high-protein product used in baked goods, vegetarian fake meat, pet foods, chicken nuggets, turkey burgers and imitation crabmeat. The U.S. imports 80% of the wheat gluten it consumes, including 14% from China. Also consider a product banned in the U.S.: melamine, which can enhance the protein content of animal feed but is digestible only by animals with more than one stomach, such as cows.

Two Chinese companies used melamine to boost the protein content of wheat gluten, which was sold to the U.S. and ended up in American-produced pet food. The FDA said it received more than 17,000 related consumer complaints related to the contamination, including the reported deaths of more than 4,000 cats and dogs.

"There are definitely times when things happen we don't expect," said Dr. David Acheson, recently appointed as the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection. "Melamine in wheat gluten was an example of that. We did not consider wheat gluten to be a high-risk product."
In today's global food chain, the FDA's inspection of only one in 100 imports may not be enough to identify unexpected problems. Acheson maintains that the solution is not a higher number of inspections, but "more sophisticated and smarter" inspections. However, some trade partners still manage to get by with a little punishment, some happenstance and a bit of cunning.

In one instance, a government investigation found that after the FDA banned toothpaste from certain Chinese exporters for containing a deadly ingredient substituted to cut costs, brokers continued to import the item under the guise of a toothbrush, which was combined with the original product.

The ongoing entry of substandard products to the U.S. illustrates the holes in America's food safety net, but lawmakers and the FDA have different ideas for fixing it.

Incensed by the continued news of contaminated imports, Congress took action this year. Lawmakers held hearings, introduced legislation and even considered food's vulnerability to terrorist plots.

"The recent series of tainted food recalls has focused America's attention on the sorry state of federal oversight of the domestic food supply," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich. "This must change."

On the other hand, the FDA is calling for "enhanced collaboration" with foreign countries and "industry vigilance." The FDA proposal contained a controversial clause that would close seven of its 13 field laboratories over two years and consolidate its operations in six centrally controlled super labs, but that was recently withdrawn after consumer groups and lawmakers said the measure would further limit the agency's oversight capabilities.

The agency's proposal, which stresses risk assessment and stronger scientific analysis, came under fire during a House committee food safety hearing in July.

"The administration thinks that a leaner and meaner system is going to protect American consumers, but in fact it puts them at greater risk," said Dingell, who came out with a draft food safety bill before Congress went on recess in August.

Of the FDA proposal, Acheson said, "The goal is to test more products, to test it faster and to test it more efficiently and therefore cheaper. The shift here for the agency is trying to move more from being reactive, more to being proactive in terms of preventing the problems in the first place."

The FDA has field employees in about 90 ports of entry, about a quarter of all ports that receive agency-regulated imports. The government investigation found that during a typical day in the FDA's San Francisco office, which the agency wants to close, a safety reviewer would check about 1,000 entries -- or about one entry line every 30 seconds. It also said a single entry of Chinese herbs can take more than one hour to review.

Dingell's draft bill calls for charging manufacturers and importers user fees of about $500 million a year, restricting entries to ports in metropolitan areas with FDA labs, barring the agency's lab closures and consolidations, boosting civil fines and creating a certification system that would require foreign producers to meet U.S. standards. Committee staffers said the draft legislation would be finalized and introduced in the fall.

Other lawmakers have put forth similar bills, two of which aim to create a Food Safety Administration that would consolidate the review process in one agency.

Hubbard, the former FDA assistant commissioner who is now a senior adviser at the Coalition for a Stronger FDA, sees the creation of a single agency as unlikely and instead advocates strengthening the FDA -- fast.

"This isn't just a China issue. There are lots of other developing countries that are sending food to us," Hubbard said. "There's a long way to go, and Congress doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to get there."