The media have tried to scare everybody into thinking that the demise
of the honey bee will cause food shortages in this country. Probably
not true, BUT -- it will cause increased imports, especially if these
products can be produced more cheaply elsewhere. AND -- we will have
to deal with a huge surge in unsafe products:
QUOTED MATERIAL:
"Assuring the safety of food in large nations is a demanding
proposition, whether it's China or the United States. And neither of
our countries has perfected this process."
Many experts say the problems are a consequence of globalization, and
especially of America's growing dependence on China for food
ingredients.
The FDA lists on its Web site food imports its inspectors have refused
at U.S. ports. Last month, FDA inspectors blocked 257 food shipments
from China, according to the list.
"That's by far the most of all the countries of the world," says
William Hubbard.
In the past year, the FDA rejected more than twice as many food
shipments from China as from all other countries combined.
The rejected shipments make an unappetizing list. Inspectors commonly
block Chinese food imports because they're "filthy." That's the
official term.
"They might smell decomposition. They might see gross contamination of
the food. 'Filthy' is a broad term for a product that is not fit for
human consumption," Hubbard says.
Another rejection code is "vet-drug-res." That means the food product,
usually things like fish, seafood and eels, contains residues of
veterinary drugs, such as antibiotics and antifungals.
"These fish are often raised in polluted water, unfortunately. So
they're given these drugs to treat them," Hubbard says.
Drug residues in food are illegal. They promote antibiotic resistance,
which makes drugs useless when they're needed. One drug that routinely
shows up in Chinese food imports is dangerous. It's a veterinary
antibiotic that causes cancer in animals.
When Hubbard was at the FDA, he heard all kinds of stories about
foreign food processors, like the one a staffer told him after
visiting a Chinese factory that makes herbal tea.
"To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on
a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust
would more rapidly dry the leaves out," Hubbard says. "And the problem
there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were
essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves."
That lead-contaminated herbal tea would only be caught by FDA
inspectors at the border if they knew to look for it, Hubbard says.
"The system is so understaffed now that what is being caught and
stopped is only a fraction of the food that's actually slipping
through the net," he says.
The FDA normally inspects about 1 percent of all food and food
ingredients at U.S. borders. It does tests on about half of 1 percent.
And official vigilance has been going down — for two reasons.
First, food imports have increased dramatically, from $45 billion in
2003 to $64 billion three years later.
"China has increased overall its food imports to the United States by
over 20 percent in the last year alone," Kennedy says. "Going back
three years, we have doubled our agricultural inputs from China."
China has become the leading supplier of many food ingredients, such
as apple juice, a primary sweetener in many foods; garlic and garlic
powder, a major flavor agent; sausage casings and cocoa butter.
China now supplies 80 percent of the world's ascorbic acid — vitamin
C. It's used as a preservative and nutritional enriching agent in
thousands of foods. One-third of the world's vitamin A now comes from
China, along with much of the supply of vitamin B-12 and many
health-food supplements, such as the amino acid lysine.
That is no accident. Chinese manufacturers have tried to corner the
market in many food ingredients by under-pricing other suppliers.
Leo Hepner, a food-ingredient consultant based in London, says vitamin
C is a good example.
"The price in 1995 was $15 per kilogram," Hepner says. "Today, the
price from China is $3.50."
No one can compete with that. So most Western producers of vitamin C
have shut down.
That's globalization. But there's a hidden price for cheap goods.
Earlier this year, lead-contaminated multivitamins showed up on the
shelves of U.S. retailers. And this spring, vitamin A from China
contaminated with dangerous bacteria nearly ended up in European baby
food.
It's bound to happen more often. Hubbard says the agency is
overwhelmed by the rising tide of imports.
"When I came to the FDA in the 1970s, the food program was almost half
of the FDA's budget. Today, it's only a quarter," Hubbard says.
Experts say the FDA has about 650 food inspectors to cover 60,000
domestic food producers and 418 ports of entry.
The agency plans to close nearly half of its 13 food-testing labs.
All that means food safety depends on the vigilance of food companies
operating in a fast-changing world. Many companies may not know much
about their suppliers.
Earlier this month, the FDA wrote a letter to food manufacturers
reminding them of their legal responsibility to make sure all the
ingredients they use are safe. Don't depend on FDA testing, the letter
says.
Consumers who want to find out where food is coming from or what
American companies are doing to safeguard it might not have much luck.
Four years ago, Congress passed a law requiring food to be labeled for
its country-of-origin. But that doesn't extend to individual food
ingredients.
And when NPR asked major food companies where they get their
ingredients and how they test them, companies either didn't respond or
said those matters are proprietary secrets.
Source:
National Public Radio
Morning Edition, May 25, 2007 ·
http://tinyurl.com/23jp3m
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