Food importers to guarantee their imports meet safety, health standards
A proposal for screening imported foods would require American companies to certify that their foreign suppliers meet U.S. standards and would reward suppliers who undertake quality-monitoring programs
There is no disagreement over two facts: First, more and more food stuffs — and food ingredients — are being imported into the United States, and, second, the various government agencies in charge of ensuring that this imported food meets minimal U.S. health and safety standards simply do not have the budget and manpower to do the job. Congress and the Bush administration are thus moving toward the creation of a new system for screening imported foods that would require companies — that is, the food importing comapnies — to certify that their foreign suppliers meet U.S. standards. The new system would place a much heavier burden for consumer safety on the American firms which import goods from China, Mexico, and elsewhere. The Baltimore Sun’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar writes that the government would set the rules for the system, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would inspect more imports than it does now. The bulk of the responsibility for ensuring safety would fall on industry, though. The main argument is over whether a fee should be imposed on importers to fund more port-of-entry inspections, as Democrats in Congress propose. Industry groups vociferously oppose the fee. The Bush administration has said that it wants to reduce the strain on the severely overstretched system of inspections at ports. “There is agreement that the current system of FDA inspections at the border doesn’t work, and there is agreement that FDA needs additional resources,” said William Hubbard, a spokesman for a coalition of groups trying to boost the agency’s budget. “And there is a conceptual agreement that this prevention model is the way to go.”
Most food eaten in the United States is produced here, but a growing number of food items, and an increasing number of ingredients in processed foods, are imported. The FDA has jurisdiction over many of such foods, while the Department of Agriculture oversees meat and poultry imports. The food industry agrees that there is a problem with the current import system and has signaled that it is willing to accept new requirements. “With respect to the safety of imported food, no one is arguing that we need to do nothing,” said Stuart Pape, a Washington lawyer who represents the major food industry trade group. “I think everybody here agrees that the current system - the status quo - is intolerable.” His client, the Grocery Manufacturers/Food Products Association, recently proposed an import safety program that addressed several of the issues raised by the administration and by Congress. Its main points:
—Importers would be required to set up safety programs for their suppliers in accord with FDA guidelines for the minimum standard
—Importers with high-quality programs, who are willing to undertake extra testing and voluntarily share their data with the FDA, would be eligible for speedy processing at U.S. ports
—The United States would work with international organizations to establish comprehensive global safety standards for food as well as with individual nations seeking to improve their own programs
—The FDA budget would be increased so that more scientists and inspectors could be hired; currently, only about 1 percent of food imports are inspected.
Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan), has proposed a fee of up to $50 per shipment on imports. One shipping container of foods can contain many such individual shipments on which the fee would be assessed. Dingell’s legislation also incorporates some elements of the industry proposal, such as speedy entry for shipments from firms with superior standards. It is estimated that the fee could raise as much as $500 million a year, allowing the hiring of enough inspectors to check about 10 percent of shipments, and sharply increasing the level of deterrence against shoddy or unscrupulous importers.
In response, industry raises the age-old question of who should pay a for public good such food saftey. Industry’s representatives say that the import fee would amount to a tax and argue that the cost of food safety, like that of national defense, should be spread among all taxpayers.
