Imported Food Rarely Inspected
By ANDREW BRIDGES
AP

WASHINGTON (April 16) - Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables,
fruit and other foods are inspected - yet those government inspections
regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.

Frozen catfish from China, beans from Belgium, jalapenos from Peru,
blackberries from Guatemala, baked goods from Canada, India and the
Philippines - the list of tainted food detained at the border by the
Food and Drug Administration stretches on.

Add to that the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten that poisoned cats
and dogs nationwide and led to a massive pet food recall, and you've
got a real international pickle. Does the United States have the
wherewithal to ensure the food it imports is safe?

Food safety experts say no.

With only a minuscule percentage of shipments inspected, they say the
nation is vulnerable to harm from abroad, where rules and regulations
governing food production are often more lax than they are at home.

"FDA doesn't have enough resources or control over this situation
presently," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's
Center for Food Safety, which works with industry to improve safety.

Last month alone, FDA detained nearly 850 shipments of grains, fish,
vegetables, nuts, spice, oils and other imported foods for issues
ranging from filth to unsafe food coloring to contamination with
pesticides to salmonella.

And that's with just 1.3 percent of the imports inspected. As for the
other 98.7 percent, it's not inspected, much less detained, and goes
to feed the nation's growing appetite for imported foods.

Each year, the average American eats about 260 pounds of imported
foods, including processed, ready-to-eat products and single
ingredients. Imports account for about 13 percent of the annual diet.

"Never before in history have we had the sort of system that we have
now, meaning a globalization of the food supply," said Robert
Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied
Nutrition.

FDA inspections focus on foods known to be at risk for contamination,
including fish, shellfish, fruit and vegetables. Food from countries
or producers previously shown to be problematic also are flagged for a
closer look.

Consider this list of Chinese products detained by the FDA just in the
last month: frozen catfish tainted with illegal veterinary drugs,
fresh ginger polluted with pesticides, melon seeds contaminated with a
cancer-causing toxin and filthy dried dates.

But even foods expected to be safe can harbor unexpected perils. Take
wheat gluten: Grains and grain byproducts like it are rarely eaten raw
and generally pose few health risks, since cooking kills bacteria and
other pathogens.

Even so, the FDA can't say for sure whether the ingredient used in the
pet foods was inspected after it arrived from China. And if the wheat
gluten was, officials said, it wouldn't have been tested for melamine.
Even though the chemical isn't allowed in food for pets or people, in
any quantity, it previously wasn't believed toxic.

How did the melamine wind up in the wheat gluten? Investigators still
don't know. Meanwhile, China is struggling to overhaul its food system
and improve safety standards, but still faces major hurdles.

Farmers use pesticides and chemical fertilizers to build produce
yields and antibiotics are used on seafood and livestock. Heavy metals
also can be introduced into the food chain by widespread industrial
pollution.

Increasingly, those foods are sold in a now global marketplace.

While the European Union , Canada and Mexico still top the list of
food exporters to the U.S., China is coming up fast. Since 1997, the
value of Chinese food imports, including commodities like wheat
gluten, has more than tripled, to $2.1 billion from $644 million,
according to Agriculture Department statistics. It accounts for 3.3
percent of the total food the U.S. buys abroad.

For suspect imported products - and wheat gluten is now one of them -
the FDA issues alerts to its inspectors. The FDA flags Chinese food
and other imported products it regulates, like cosmetics, for that
extra scrutiny more than any other country except Mexico.

To safeguard its export business, China is looking at separating foods
by their ultimate destination, domestic or foreign, according to
Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at
Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit.

U.S. government statistics suggest China still has a way to go.

The FDA has been stopping Chinese food import shipments at the rate of
about 200 per month this year. Shippers have the right to appeal the
detentions, after which the government can order products returned or
destroyed.

How do you know the origin of the food you eat? The 2002 Farm Act
called for fish, fruit and vegetable imports to be labeled by country
of origin, though implementation for the latter two foods has been
delayed.

Meanwhile, the U.S. imports more and more, though the increase in
value is partially due to the weaker dollar.

All told, the U.S. is expected to import a record $70 billion in
agricultural products for the 12 months ending in September, according
to an Agriculture Department forecast. The value of those imports will
be about double the nearly $36 billion purchased overseas in 1997.

Contributing to that growth are the fresh fruits and vegetables
imported during the offseason, when domestic production dwindles or
ends.

About one-quarter of our fruit, both fresh and frozen, is imported.
For tree nuts, it's about half. And for fish and shellfish, more than
two-thirds come from overseas.

Even as the amount of imported food increased, the percentage of FDA
inspections declined - from 1.8 percent in 2003 to 1.3 percent this
year to an expected 1.1 percent next year.

"Inspections have a very important role but they're not the solution.
They are the verification," FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach
said.

The FDA and the USDA have adopted a "risk-based" inspection
philosophy, focusing on specific foods, sources or producers that they
believe represent the largest potential risk to the public's health.

"The public at large is not at any increased risk," said Craig Henry,
senior vice president and chief operating officer for scientific and
regulatory affairs of the Grocery Manufacturers-Food Products
Association, an industry group.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for
Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, countered that
"risk-based" is just shorthand for "reduced resources."

"Whenever they say 'risk-based approach,' it often means they don't
have enough staff to actually do the job. They're doing triage.
They're trying to hit what's most important to inspect but they're
missing a lot," DeWaal said.

Groups lobbying to increase the FDA's budget say its spending on food
safety has languished, despite the agency's outsized role in ensuring
the safety of the nation's food supply.

A recent Government Accountability Office report noted that most of
the $1.7 billion the federal government allocates to food safety goes
to the USDA, which is responsible for regulating about 20 percent of
the food supply. The FDA, responsible for most of the other 80
percent, gets about 24 percent of the total spent on food safety.

Unlike the FDA, the USDA requires foreign inspection certificates to
accompany all products it regulates, which include meat and poultry.
Those imports are then reinspected at each port of entry before they
are allowed into this country - something that doesn't happen to all
FDA-regulated imports.

Under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, anyone importing food into the
United States is required to notify the FDA of the shipment before it
arrives by land, air or sea. That allows the FDA to intercept
contaminated products before they reach the marketplace, though agency
officials acknowledge it doesn't always work that way.

"We have better control than we did a few years ago but it is largely
the responsibility of the importer to make sure those products are
safe," said Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's top veterinarian.

ChemNutra Inc., the Las Vegas importer of the tainted wheat gluten,
said it was "particularly troubled" that its supplier did not disclose
it contained melamine.

Doyle, of the University of Georgia, warned the contaminated pet food
could be an unsavory taste of what's to come.

"This is not the first and will not be the last but it certainly is a
wakeup call for the public to get a better appreciation for where this
country is going with imports and imported foods," Doyle said.

Brackett, the FDA official, said the globalization of the food supply
means the agency is going to have to be more creative and strategic in
ensuring its safety. "I am not quite sure how we're going to do that
yet," he said, "except to know that that's the direction that we're
going to be heading."

2007-04-16 07:09:49

On 16 Apr 2007 14:38:19 -0700, "Sheldon" > wrote:
>
>WASHINGTON (April 16) - Just 1.3 percent of imported fish, vegetables,
>fruit and other foods are inspected - yet those government inspections
>regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.
>

I remember seeing a news program where they complained that
"due to cuts in funding, the FDA can only field 625 inspectors"

I went to the FDA website to see how many people
are employed by the foods section of FDA.
( apparently it's a well kept secret )


<rj>

Sheldon cut-and-pasted:

> Contributing to that growth are the fresh fruits and vegetables
> imported during the offseason, when domestic production dwindles or
> ends.
>
> About one-quarter of our fruit, both fresh and frozen, is imported.
> For tree nuts, it's about half.

Community-supported agriculture is the answer! Yeah, I know, I get a bit
evangelical about it. But the produce I get from my CSA is all grown
_locally_; I don't ever have to worry about the scares related to imported
fruits or vegetables. Moreover, I cook what is IN SEASON HERE, not something
that has been shipped from an unidentified farm thousands of miles away.

Bob

"Bob NOOBIE Terwilliger" wrote:
> Sheldon cut-and-pasted:
>
> > Contributing to that growth are the fresh fruits and vegetables
> > imported during the offseason, when domestic production dwindles or
> > ends.

Actually it was "*COPIED* and pasted*, a difference a noobie
mother****er like you wouldn't know... and it was clearly indicated
that it was from the AP, so why would that bother you, because you're
an ENVIOUS ignoranus noobie douchebag is why.

Bob Terwilliger wrote:
>
>
> Community-supported agriculture is the answer! Yeah, I know, I get a bit
> evangelical about it. But the produce I get from my CSA is all grown
> _locally_; I don't ever have to worry about the scares related to imported
> fruits or vegetables. Moreover, I cook what is IN SEASON HERE, not something
> that has been shipped from an unidentified farm thousands of miles away.

I could not agree more. I live in an area where there are lots of fruits
and vegetables grown locally. I get right ticked off when I go into the
grocery store in the middle of our growing season and see imported fruits
and vegetables, especially when they are so much more expensive that the
local markets are charging. There is no need to be burning up fuel to ship
perishables two thousand miles and importing strange bugs and bacteria with
it.

Dave Smith wrote:


> Bob Terwilliger wrote:
>
> > Community-supported agriculture is the answer! Yeah, I know, I get a bit
> > evangelical about it. But the produce I get from my CSA is all grown
> > _locally_; I don't ever have to worry about the scares related to imported
> > fruits or vegetables. Moreover, I cook what is IN SEASON HERE, not something
> > that has been shipped from an unidentified farm thousands of miles away.
>
> I could not agree more. I live in an area where there are lots of fruits
> and vegetables grown locally. I get right ticked off when I go into the
> grocery store in the middle of our growing season and see imported fruits
> and vegetables, especially when they are so much more expensive that the
> local markets are charging. There is no need to be burning up fuel to ship
> perishables two thousand miles and importing strange bugs and bacteria with
> it.


Thing is, some of this imported produce is cheaper. I'm thinking
specifically of Chinese garlic, I've seen it all over. It's the stuff
that comes four or so heads in a little nylon net bag. It's about
half or much less the price of domestic. Sometimes it's labelled not
only in Engrish, but in Russian and Spanish and French..."Gilroy here
we come!".

I've read articles about this big push by Chinese garlic exporters,
they intend to get a big share of the market...they've done this with
seafood, etc. I've even seen Usenet and e-mail spam from some of
these Chinese garlic producers, you might have too...

In my shopping at Asian stores I notice a lot of imported Chinese
stuff (packaged) that is very poorly or barely labelled. I got a
bottle of what the shelf display said was "chili condiment" the other
day, I'm always up for a new Chinese condiment or whatever, how can I
resist at $1.25? It obviously had chilis and garlic pieces, BUT when
opened I saw it contained peanuts! The microscopic English label
slapped on made no mention of peanuts. The stuff was dee - lish, but
what if I'd been allergic to peanuts?

Foodstuffs from Taiwan or Malaysia or wherever are well - labelled,
the Chinese really need to get up to snuff in that labelling
department...

The Chinese still have the Commie mindset that prevailed in the old
USSR and Eastern Bloc, they'll have one factory production line for
domestic stuff, another for "export - quality" items. Thing is,
they'll intermingle and try to slip in the cheap 'n nasty stuff into
the "export - quality" product - thus you'll get things like the
recent pet food scare. People keep touting China as "the next Japan",
but don't believe it, unlike Japan the PRC does not have a top - class
techno - industrial - research mindset like the Japanese have had for
about the last century. China is great at producing cheap stuff for
Wal - Mart, but they have a very long way to go to catch up with an
advanced nation like Japan or Taiwan in the quality department...

--
Best
Greg

Gregory Morrow wrote:
>
>
> > I could not agree more. I live in an area where there are lots of fruits
> > and vegetables grown locally. I get right ticked off when I go into the
> > grocery store in the middle of our growing season and see imported fruits
> > and vegetables, especially when they are so much more expensive that the
> > local markets are charging. There is no need to be burning up fuel to ship
> > perishables two thousand miles and importing strange bugs and bacteria with
> > it.
>
> Thing is, some of this imported produce is cheaper. I'm thinking
> specifically of Chinese garlic, I've seen it all over. It's the stuff
> that comes four or so heads in a little nylon net bag. It's about
> half or much less the price of domestic. Sometimes it's labelled not
> only in Engrish, but in Russian and Spanish and French..."Gilroy here
> we come!".

Some of it is cheaper. Some of it is just easier for stores to get by
making one call to a major supplier than having to deal with 20 local
farmers.
>
> In my shopping at Asian stores I notice a lot of imported Chinese
> stuff (packaged) that is very poorly or barely labelled. I got a
> bottle of what the shelf display said was "chili condiment" the other
> day, I'm always up for a new Chinese condiment or whatever, how can I
> resist at $1.25? It obviously had chilis and garlic pieces, BUT when
> opened I saw it contained peanuts! The microscopic English label
> slapped on made no mention of peanuts. The stuff was dee - lish, but
> what if I'd been allergic to peanuts?

Products sold here in Canada are supposed to be labelled in English and
French. It looks like someone forgot to tell some of the oriental stores. I
have bought things like those you mention that say only Chinese Hot Chilli
Sauce, and in the Dutch Deli they have Indonesian foods with a sticker with
the ingredients and instructions in Dutch. >


However, I was thinking of more perishable goods like fruit and
vegetables. I live in the heart of a tender fruit growing area that
produces wonderful cherries, peaches and apricots as well as apples and
pears. We also produce a lot of strawberries and other berries. When the
fruit is at the height of its season here the stores are carrying imported
fruit. Perhaps the stores save a few pennies by importing them, but that is
also money going out of the country rather than paying local people and
paying into the local economy so that it can come back into the store.

On Apr 16, 9:33 pm, "Bob Terwilliger" >
wrote:
> Sheldon cut-and-pasted:
>
> > Contributing to that growth are the fresh fruits and vegetables
> > imported during the offseason, when domestic production dwindles or
> > ends.
>
> > About one-quarter of our fruit, both fresh and frozen, is imported.
> > For tree nuts, it's about half.
>
> Community-supported agriculture is the answer! Yeah, I know, I get a bit
> evangelical about it. But the produce I get from my CSA is all grown
> _locally_; I don't ever have to worry about the scares related to imported
> fruits or vegetables. Moreover, I cook what is IN SEASON HERE, not something
> that has been shipped from an unidentified farm thousands of miles away.

For about one fourth of the year, nothing is IN SEASON HERE.

The ground is frozen about four feet down.

What shall we eat, pray tell?

Cindy Hamilton

"Cindy Hamilton" > wrote

> On Apr 16, 9:33 pm, "Bob Terwilliger" >
> wrote:

>> Community-supported agriculture is the answer! Yeah, I know, I get a bit
>> evangelical about it. But the produce I get from my CSA is all grown
>> _locally_; I don't ever have to worry about the scares related to
>> imported
>> fruits or vegetables. Moreover, I cook what is IN SEASON HERE, not
>> something
>> that has been shipped from an unidentified farm thousands of miles away.
>
> For about one fourth of the year, nothing is IN SEASON HERE.
>
> The ground is frozen about four feet down.
>
> What shall we eat, pray tell?

That's what I think when I hear Eat what's in season, usually some
acclaimed chef is telling me that. Nothing is in season. I suppose in
the olden days, I'd be polishing off the last of the potatoes and parsnips
from the root cellar. Well, I don't have a root cellar, I didn't put up
last
season's vegetables, I have to go to the store and buy stuff grown
elsewhere.

I can't imagine life without lemons. Sounds philosophical. Heh.
Lemons do not grow here. I have to get them from a farm at least
a thousand miles away. Bananas? I don't think they grow in
the US 49, do they?

I'm not knocking eat locally, I do in the summer! I visit the farm
stands. They close after Halloween.

nancy

Nancy Young wrote:
> "Cindy Hamilton" > wrote
>
>> On Apr 16, 9:33 pm, "Bob Terwilliger" >
>> wrote:
>
>>> Community-supported agriculture is the answer! Yeah, I know, I get
>>> a bit evangelical about it. But the produce I get from my CSA is
>>> all grown _locally_; I don't ever have to worry about the scares
>>> related to imported
>>> fruits or vegetables. Moreover, I cook what is IN SEASON HERE, not
>>> something
>>> that has been shipped from an unidentified farm thousands of miles
>>> away.
>>
>> For about one fourth of the year, nothing is IN SEASON HERE.
>>
>> The ground is frozen about four feet down.
>>
>> What shall we eat, pray tell?
>
> That's what I think when I hear Eat what's in season, usually some
> acclaimed chef is telling me that. Nothing is in season. I suppose
> in the olden days, I'd be polishing off the last of the potatoes and
> parsnips from the root cellar. Well, I don't have a root cellar, I
> didn't put up last
> season's vegetables, I have to go to the store and buy stuff grown
> elsewhere.
>
Better get Ron to start digging that root cellar, Nancy!

> I'm not knocking eat locally, I do in the summer! I visit the farm
> stands. They close after Halloween.
>
> nancy

Our farmer's market is pitiful. It's open from May - October. At the
height of summer you can find wonderful summer squashes, freshly hulled
peas, broccoli, apples, peaches and watermelon. TONS of watermelon. I
think I saw some cantaloupes there. That's about it. In the fall they
*still* have tons of watermelon. You can buy corn, although I had to beg
them for corn ON the cob, not run through some machine that removed the
kernels from the husk. No winter squashes; either they don't grow them or
it's still too warm for them. I didn't even see many pumpkins although
there were some odd decorative gourds.

Jill

On Apr 17, 10:56 pm, Steve Wertz > wrote:
> On 16 Apr 2007 14:38:19 -0700, Sheldon wrote:
>
> > Each year, the average American eats about 260 pounds of imported
> > foods, including processed, ready-to-eat products and single
> > ingredients. Imports account for about 13 percent of the annual diet.
>
> That would mean the average American eats about 5.2lbs of food a
> day.
>
> Somebody else must be eating my share.
>
> -sw

Just the usual innumerate reporter?

John Kane, Kingston ON Canada

On Apr 17, 10:56�pm, Steve Wertz > wrote:
> On 16 Apr 2007 14:38:19 -0700, Sheldon wrote:
>
> > Each year, the average American eats about 260 pounds of imported
> > foods, including processed, ready-to-eat products and single
> > ingredients. Imports account for about 13 percent of the annual diet.
>
> That would mean the average American eats about 5.2lbs of food a
> day. *
>
> Somebody else must be eating my share.

No, you're just full of shit, literally.

Folks would be pretty amazed to discover the actual weight of what
they consume in a day, in the US it's about 10 pounds... fortunately
for most people the bulk (excuse the pun) is low caloric and passes
right through. plus about 65pct of the food we eat consists of
water... and us normal folks (not sqwertz) perspire, respire and pee.

Sheldon