A New Threat from Communist China
The Bush administration “National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has not pushed for an immediate recall of these defective products. Instead, it is currently squabbling whether Foreign Tire Sales over whether FTS has the funds to pay for the recall.”
Up to 450,000 of the Hangzhou Chinese tires are on the road and they refuse to help with the recall. Do you think our trade with China is out of control?
CNN-And a new threat from communist China. Now it’s defective automobile tires. The U.S. government is aware of the danger and have been for some time now. Why no recall? Why no concern about American consumers? We’ll have that report. Stay with us.
DOBBS: More troubling news about communist Chinese exports to this country. An American distributor now saying almost half a million tires that it imported from China are defective and dangerous, but the company says it can’t afford to conduct a recall.
Now some lawmakers say the Bush administration should step in, take those tires off the road and actually show some concern for American consumers.
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Up to 450,000 of the Hangzhou Chinese tires are on the road. They are defective and can cause a crash. But as of now, there is no recall. And the tires are still being sold. The tire brands Westlake, Compass, Telluride and YKS.
Four senators are so outraged, they’ve written to the president: “Amazingly, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has not pushed for an immediate recall of these defective products. Instead, it is currently squabbling whether Foreign Tire Sales over whether FTS has the funds to pay for the recall.”
SEN. DEBBIE STABENOW (D), MICHIGAN: The Bush administration should not be arguing with the distributor about who’s going to pay for a recall when every single day, these tires are on the road and this could cost people’s lives. So we need to have the federal government act with a mandatory recall.
PILGRIM: The U.S. distributor, Foreign Tire Sales, today said they don’t have the money for a full recall but will pay for a recall until the money runs out. Their lawyer estimates that could cover about 10 to 15 percent of the tires out there, adding, quote, “After that, unfortunately, everybody is on their own.”
They suggest the Chinese manufacturer should step up and fund the recall. The manufacturer, Hangzhou, is the second largest tire maker in China.
The NTSHA isn’t buying that argument, writing, “A company that chooses to import motor vehicles or motor vehicle equipment into this country, accepts the same responsibility for compliance with the Safety Act as any other manufacturer.”
Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal is contacting other states to remove the tires from sale.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, CONNECTICUT STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: States have an independent obligation. We can’t wait for the federal government if it fails to act aggressively and proactively. And that’s why we’re seizing the initiative. The sales should have stopped, because dealers are on notice.
PILGRIM: But in the meantime, the U.S. consumer is at risk.
PILGRIM: The senators cite numerous other dangerous products from China, writing to President Bush, you must demand the Chinese government take action to ensure the Chinese companies are not peddling dangerous products to our citizens — Lou. It’s pretty basic.
DOBBS: Pretty basic. At the same time, the National Highway Traffic Safety folks look like they’re out of their minds. We’ve known about these problems. They’ve known about these problems now for some time.
PILGRIM: They were notified June 11. No recall yet. And they have to — the company has to put forward a recall statement by July 2. So…
DOBBS: The idea of doing the right thing is not going to overwhelm either, obviously, this distributor, our own national highway traffic safety agency, nor obviously the communist Chinese, who have exporting to us tainted pet food, poisoned toothpaste. They’ve just closed how many food factories — plants in..?
PILGRIM: A hundred and eighty.
DOBBS: A hundred and eighty in China. We’re getting reports that nearly every aspect of the process in China is polluted and toxic in some way and without any real oversight. Much like the United States, in terms of a lack of oversight.
FYI
Chinese fish crisis shows seafood safety challenges
By Julie Schmit, Calum MacLeod, Elizabeth Weise and Barbara Hansen, USA TODAY
CHANGLE, China — At the Meihua Aquatic Processing Factory here, hundreds of workers in white coats and masks chop up squid headed for the U.S. market.
The tiled walls and stainless-steel equipment are those of a modern factory. But Meihua also represents the tarnished food-safety reputation that China is trying to shed and the risks facing U.S. consumers who increasingly are eating fish from China, the world’s top seafood producer.
U.S. ACTS: Imports of Chinese-raised fish limited
CHINA REACTS: Officials say blocking imports is unfair
In the past 13 months, at least two dozen shipments of catfish, eel and tilapia from Meihua were rejected for entry into the USA by the Food and Drug Administration, FDA records show. The products were rejected because of actual or suspected contamination that included an anti-fungal that battles fish diseases but isn’t allowed by the FDA because it has been shown to increase cancer rates in lab animals.
Recently, there have been massive recalls linked to tainted ingredients in pet food, toothpaste and toy trains that came from China, but U.S. consumers are also likely to encounter Chinese seafood.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: China | Chinese | Food and Drug Administration | Fisheries | Aquaculture
China has a mixed record on seafood safety.
It exported more than 1 billion pounds of seafood to the USA last year — more than any other nation, says researcher Urner Barry. About 18% of U.S. seafood imports come from China, the National Fisheries Institute says. China also had more seafood imports rejected by the FDA than any other country: 253, almost one-third of which were eel.
Thursday, the FDA placed broad restrictions on imports of Chinese shrimp, catfish, eel, basa (a type of catfish) and dace (similar to carp). The move came after 25% of the Chinese products the FDA sampled from October through May were found to contain residue of chemicals the FDA doesn’t allow in fish. Most are known or suspected carcinogens.
China has long had more problems with such contaminants than other countries that send seafood to the USA, says William More, director of the U.S.-based Aquaculture Certification Council, which checks the quality of products for commercial seafood buyers. Last year, More visited 60 shrimp plants in 17 countries, including China.
The ACC inspects, audits and certifies shrimp plants around the world to help buyers — including retailing giant Wal-Mart and Darden Restaurants, owner of Red Lobster — decide from whom to buy, More says.
Such information is critical. Wegmans, an East Coast-based grocery chain, buys only one seafood product from China: frozen, farm-raised tilapia. The grocer has considered other seafood products from China, says spokeswoman Jeanne Colleluori. But after finding it difficult to trace Chinese seafood back to where it was grown, monitor how it was tested and audit processors, “Our decisions have been to go with other producers from other countries,” she says.
Chinese officials and fish producers say the country has vastly curtailed the use of anti-fungals banned in U.S. exports in recent years, a contention shared by Rohana Subasinghe, an aquaculture official for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
“The use is reducing in China and everywhere,” he says.
According to preliminary European Union data the FAO analyzed, the EU rejected 117 seafood shipments from China in 2005, down from 225 three years earlier.
In May, the Chinese government banned the Meihua plant from exporting eel or catfish to the USA until it can prove to Chinese officials that its products are clear of disallowed chemicals.
“We are losing money, about $1 million a month,” says Meihua boss Zhang Yinhai, 42, a former soldier who once ran a soft-drink firm for the People’s Liberation Army.
He says the company’s tests have not detected chemical residue and that the state-owned company’s 23 fish farmers don’t use them. But he says they may have used them previously and that such chemicals still may be in the mud of farm pools.
“Our company’s most basic principle is not to harm the consumer,” Zhang says. Meihua is still exporting other seafood to the USA, including squid and tilapia.
Use of anti-fungals targeted
With Chinese seafood, the FDA’s main focus is on fish farms’ use of chemicals or drugs the agency bans in fish for human consumption. That’s because residue can pass from the fish to consumers.
The substances the FDA looks for most often include the anti-fungals malachite green and gentian violet, and the antibiotics chloramphenicol and nitrofurans, a family of microbial agents. They are good at wiping out a range of fish ailments and are used on humans for everything from eye to urinary tract infections. They also are known or suspected carcinogens.
The FDA began testing for the residues in 2001, triggered by concerns of chloramphenicol in shrimp. Although dozens of countries export seafood to the USA, the FDA devotes half of the aquaculture drug tests it does on imported seafood to products from China, says Don Kraemer, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Food Safety.
Kraemer says the antibiotics don’t pose an “imminent hazard to health” because they’re being detected in “very low” levels. On Thursday, the FDA put ranges for the antibiotics at 1 to 30 parts per billion in the tested seafood.
Another class of antibiotics, fluoroquinolones including ciprofloxacin, also are not allowed in fish for humans. The human risk isn’t toxicity, but there are fears that broad use will spur bacterial resistance and make the drugs less effective at treating human infections.
Malachite green, the anti-fungal, is another matter. The chemical dye battles fish parasites and fungal infections. Lab tests have showed increased cancer rates in rats and mice fed malachite green and leucomalachite green, which is formed from malachite green, at doses ranging from 100 to 600 parts per million for two years.
Last year, the FDA restricted imports of eel from China after FDA tests found that 91% of those sampled contained leucomalachite green — some at levels up to 3,239 parts per billion. “That level was disturbingly high,” says Kraemer.
China banned malachite green in 2002. Yet the violations indicate that it’s still widely used in China’s aquaculture industry, the FDA says.
Even before Thursday’s move by the FDA, the agency had restricted all eel from China unless the importer proves that it’s safe. Last year, Canada also started testing every eel shipment from China for malachite green. Japan and South Korea have restricted Chinese eel imports in recent years as well.
High-risk import
Seafood has long been considered a high-risk import because it’s perishable, has a high potential for bacterial contamination and is susceptible to ocean pollutants. Of the imported shipments the FDA refused entry into the USA last year, 58% were cited for filth and salmonella.
But farmed fish, which now account for half the fish U.S. consumers eat, pose new challenges because antibiotics or anti-fungals may be needed to keep them well, especially in developing countries where water pollution is rampant.
Some Chinese farmers continue to use the antibiotics because they are cheap and effective, says Carlos Sanchez, import buyer for Beaver Street Fisheries of Jacksonville, Fla., a leading frozen seafood importer.
China’s fish farmers are largely small, family-run operations that sell fish or shrimp to large production facilities, which export the products. The antibiotics work against many diseases, and farmers typically don’t need to know exactly what’s going wrong in ponds to correct problems, Sanchez says. Beaver Street hires third-party auditors to inspect foreign suppliers.
The Netherlands-based Rabobank International, in a 2005 study, chronicled the pressures facing Chinese fish farmers. The report noted China’s “serious” water pollution issues caused primarily by industrial and urban sewage, inadequate quality-control systems, the continued “illegal use of chemicals” to combat fish disease and poor regulatory enforcement so that farmers “have little means or incentive to maintain high quality standards.”
Educating Chinese farmers has been a concern for years among nations that receive fish from China. European Union inspectors in 2005 found a new generation of chloramphenicol being used on a fish farm even though the farm had told the inspectors that no antibiotics were present. The EU report says the Chinese official overseeing the farm had approved the powder but didn’t know it was an antibiotic.
Chemical and feed salespeople in China take advantage of fish farmers, More says. “They sell these products by telling the farmers fish will grow better. The farmers are simple people, have little education and are easily manipulated.”
More says the drug and chemical residues now being found in shipments likely have been in seafood imports for decades.
The enticement to use effective but unsafe antibiotics is obvious to Chinese eel farmers Xie Shandi, 42, and Chai Yuandi, 52. They say the malachite green restrictions have cost them greatly.
Smoking cigarettes and drinking tea under an umbrella in a recent torrential downpour, the farmers say four in 10 eels die before they get to market. When they used malachite green before 2003, they say, just one in 10 died.
The farmers raise the eel in concrete-bottom pools 20 meters long and 10 meters wide at the company in south China’s Fujian province.
The eel business used to be easy, Xie says. “I would agree on a price with the buyer, and that was that.”
The eels are so packed, they thrash over and under each other. “Fish get sick easily, even by a change in the weather, just like people. So we need to use aquatic medicines,” Chai says. “They hardly ever got ill before.”
One U.S. importer, Fortuna Sea Products of Rosemead, Calif., gets 80% of its Chinese seafood from Meihua. President John Chiang says he’s worked with Meihua to better educate farmers.
Meihua also recently implemented more testing, including sample-testing every load of live fish that goes to the plant and sample-testing finished product, too, he says.
Fortuna also imported 782 cases of clam meat from Meihua that had to be recalled in 2005 for salmonella. Chiang says that product probably wasn’t cooked well enough. The FDA, which has no enforcement power over Meihua other than to reject its products, did cite Fortuna. In a 2005 warning letter, the FDA noted “serious deviations” in Fortuna’s seafood-safety controls, including lack of effective oversight of its foreign processor.
“I believe they (Meihua) cannot afford a mistake again, and neither can we,” Chiang says.
More farmer training
Chinese officials have stopped plants other than Meihua from exporting fish until the government inspects their facilities, says Kevin Wang, secretary-general of the China Catfish Institute, which is linked to the Chinese government. “The main part of the Chinese catfish industry is good,” he says.
The government is also doing more farmer training, says Joy Li, general manager Chengdu Fangcao Pharmaceutical in China. The government hired her to run training programs on aquatic medicines, and 300 have been done this year.
Companies have likewise made big investments. Meihua, which exported about $20 million in seafood to the USA last year, expects to spend $400,000 by the end of 2007 on testing equipment so it can better detect drug residue. The Yongyan Aquatic Food Group in Mingguang already has testing equipment in place, bought from U.S. firms Agilent Technologies and BioTek Instruments. “We can meet any U.S. standard,” says Wei Shouzhu, vice general manager.
Yet the FDA and others say China still struggles with enforcement — given its thousands of seafood processors and millions of farms.
One of China’s primary checks is government tests of seafood exports for chemical residue. If a shipment is clean, it gets a certificate attesting to that, says the FDA’s Kraemer. But the FDA has found that some exporters falsify certification documents.
“The Chinese system does not yet have the right supervision and controls to export to the extent it is,” says Philippa Kelly, a consultant working in Beijing on food safety issues with the Chinese government.
A primary problem, she says, is lack of resources and will among local government officials, who often are more concerned with revenue, jobs and local development issues than China’s overall reputation as a safe source of food.
Kelly also says China needs to concentrate more on education and rely less on punishment and enforcement. “China has good laws and good regulation, but why can’t it enforce them? That’s a political issue, and that’s what makes it so difficult,” she says.
The U.S. used to have the safest food supply in the world. Now our politicians work directly to limit food labeling so the consumer can not make an informed food purchase. It is more and more difficult to determine when they poison us!
Yes – and the “small government” ideologues are to blame here, for snuffing out federal agencies that used to be able to do their job and count on a budget every year.
Whether it’s safety in US mines or imports from China, the Republicans who think that government has no role to play in the market…here’s looking at you kid.
There’s a recall underway for a kid’s food called Veggie Booty. I read a blog somewhere (can’t find it now, not sure if it’s true) that said the tainted ingredient came from China. None of the news stories mention the China connection, of course.
Al
The other issue is Communist China does not play fair in our trade deals!
FYI
What to do when everything is ‘Made in China?’
MSNBC-A one-week attempt to avoid products from there meets with little success
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Poisoned pet food. Seafood laced with potentially dangerous antibiotics. Toothpaste tainted with an ingredient in antifreeze. Tires missing a key safety component.
U.S. shoppers may be forgiven if they are becoming leery of Chinese-made goods and are trying to fill their shopping carts with products free of ingredients from that country.
The trouble is, that may be almost impossible
Chinese exports have been in the spotlight since the deaths of dogs and cats in North America attributed to tainted Chinese wheat gluten, followed by this week’s recall of Chinese-made radial tires and an alert Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, warning about contaminated Chinese seafood.
My family hit some stores to see how hard it would it be for the average consumer to avoid the “Made in China” label — even for just a week.
My sons’ well-worn sneakers were starting to resemble sandals, so our family headed to the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls in search of a couple of cheap pairs to get the boys, ages 10 and 12, through the summer.
The quest began in the J.C. Penney shoe department. We soon found out this was going to be no easy task: Adidas, made in China; Sketchers, made in China; Reebok, made in China or Indonesia.
We finally found some New Balance shoes and I recalled reading that the company still makes some running shoes in the United States. The first few said “Made in China,” but we then spotted three adult styles marked “Made in the USA of imported materials.”
That sounded as close as we could get, so I asked my 12-year-old which of the three he liked.
“This one,” he said, pointing to the $75 shoe he’ll likely outgrow in months.
“Let’s keep looking,” I said.
We headed to a couple of other shoe stores — Famous Footwear and Payless — and found several other styles of sneakers mostly made in China and Indonesia.
Famous Footwear had one U.S.-made New Balance sneaker on sale for $40, but my oldest didn’t like the color combination so we moved on. I guess those well-worn sneakers can last another week until this little experiment ends.
Shopping for non China-made groceries at our local Hy-Vee grocery store seemed to be presenting few challenges, but it turned out to be more of a case of blissful ignorance than well-informed consumerism.
Products in nonfood aisles communicated their origins better than their edible counterparts. Labels of Suave shampoo, Dial hand soap, Kleenex tissues, Ziploc bags, Solo cups, Bounty napkins, Tide laundry detergent, SOS pads and Dawn dish detergent all read “Made in USA,” although none of the labels got specific about the ingredients.
Toothpaste was a bit more confusing — a concern considering some brands toothpaste made in China were recently found to contain a chemical called diethylene glycol, which is used to make antifreeze.
AquaFresh said “Made in USA” right on the box, but boxes of Crest and Colgate named only the companies that distributed the product, Procter & Gamble Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. respectively.
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Procter and Gamble on its Web site says the Crest toothpaste found in stores is made in North America, not China. Colgate-Palmolive on its site says Colgate toothpaste is safe regardless of where the company manufactures it.
The labels on most food products we looked at were of little help.
The 2002 Farm Bill passed by Congress mandated country-of-origin labeling for seafood, beef, lamb, pork, fish, fruits, vegetables and peanuts, but the Bush administration has delayed its implementation for everything except seafood until October 2008.
Al
re:# 3. Most people depend on government agencies to protect them or at least require labeling so people can make an informed decision and this is probably covered under the commerce clause.(?) And it would be bad news if the FDA was seen as discriminating against Chinese products when we’ve got plenty of unsafe food and drugs made right here. One of the problems is the FDA is becoming the jr. partner to big Pharma for example. So there’s plenty of criticism of this “government agency” coming from the “left”. All this “protection” from Chinese products may just be a p.r. move while they’re busy at work taking out the “little guys” here at home.
http://www.newswithviews.com/Richards/byron36.htm
Al
Do you understand the system is based on the manufacturing company having the liability of a re-call? If the manufacturing company has no risk via the WTO China trade deal no amount of government can fix the problem! This is a Clinton, Gore , Bush, Hillary, McCain, Price…….. sell out of Americans!
Also, we are seeing budgets cut in all kinds of things, including this because of our rising debt and interest payments and money being diverted for defense spending which many citizens want too.
In short, our infrastructure in is all rated “C” or worse, our budgets are being cut in things like monitoring food, arresting illegals and business that hire them, and many other things in our society.
This is normal for a society that doesn’t have the tax revenues to pay for those things. We are basically bankrupt as a nation since the GAO’s 2007 report says we owe more than we own. Now with some nations cutting back on lending us more money, we could face some serious problems as interest rates rise to reflect that reluctance and our buying power drops due to the declining dollar (it may rally for a while, some believe), and rising costs of food and energy.
The “conservative” view is to have “national standards,” but have most of the enforcement done by the states. However, many states are now facing huge problems with their budgets due to the retirement crunch they face in pension and healthcare promises they are finding they can’t keep or are having serious problems keeping. They too, are cutting back on budgets in other areas so they can fund their promises.
There are plenty of people in and out of government that are willing to tackle these problems but there isn’t the funds available for it. We are now starting to see only the beginning of many issues that will lower our standard of living, just as the GAO said we would for the last three years. We are rapidly running out of ways to fund all the things we want that keep our food supply safe, wages higher than other nations, infrastructure in top shape, healthcare the best, etc.
All of these things are headed down because we are going deeper into debt and more and more of our money is for mandatory spending such as Social Security, Medicare, interest on Debt and discretionary spending on defense, border security, and homeland security.
The citizens rebel when they are taxed more and the businesses and wealth leaves when it is taxed more. So, how do we fund all the things we want when nobody wants to pay for them?
Jan Paul – good post! I think the simple answer might be to consider the “Fair Tax.”
The revenues needed to fund all of this and more could become available in short order.
I recently read an article about one of the former Soviet-bloc nations (can’t remember which one) that instituted a version of the Fair Tax and the economy became a juggernaut in less than a year.
Now don’t all start hammering me at once. I’m not saying this WILL fix the problem, I’m saying it’s a good idea and one that rates discussion and debate at ALL levels of government.
John Konop for U.S. Senate – It’s time for John Q. Public to keep MORE of his hard earned money!
Jan
One way is to increase revenues by allowing small and medium sized businesses to grow and stand up to this type of overregulation. (see above link) What’s interesting is this subject ties in with “free trade vs. free enterprise”. “codex alimentarius” is a hot issue and could be the next “immigration reform” as the politicians cow tow to big business. And the controversy surrounding supplements has many facets such as mitigating the healthcare disaster and improving our own GDP just to name a couple.
The problems isn’t that there aren’t any solutions but that the ones that work aren’t popular in Congress and sometimes also not popular with the 1/2 that don’t pay income tax and don’t understand how they are paying even though they don’t.
There is much that isn’t the fault of either party currently as much as the mindset of the voters that was created over the last 70 years.
Look at almost all the nation that are rapidly growing their standards of living. They usually had to hit bottom before the people would accept change. In socialism, the promise is always, “things will be better and more fair,” each election. Yet, they aren’t better in the long run and in the gradual trend of the decades, it is down. It is reduces buying power, reduced standards of living, longer waits for healthcare or other problems they face as business and wealth leave once better opportunities in the new world market come along.
Many of the “old socialist” nations that were held up as “examples” are facing huge problems for the same reasons we are. They can’t compete with lower tax nations as we see in the complaints against Ireland by other EU nations who say the low taxes for business is luring them away from the other nations.
How do you get politicians to implement the suggestions you presented if they believe they will lose elections doing so?
Regarding the “fair tax,” I am mainly against rebates as it adds a layer of government bureaucracy that shouldn’t be there. While they say the rebates are to protect the low wage earner, they also say prices will drop 20-30% which would mean final cost wouldn’t be any higher than now with a 30% sales tax which would equal a 23% reduction in price. If that is the case, why is a rebate needed? The answer may be that imports would be 30% higher and so much of what lower wage earners buy is imported.
However, a consumption tax is good in that you get to choose to save and if you do, you aren’t taxed on the money you save unless you later take it out and spend it. It also raises imports 30% while lowering domestic goods manufactured here. The problem will be the transition period until some of that manufacturing comes back here and the resistance from importers and big retail chains than import a lot, I believe. Also, just the publicity of the 30% sales tax will scare many voters who don’t understand economics and the benefits of a consumption tax very well.
Politicians will cow tow to big business because the more they cut taxes on individuals, especially on the lower wage and middle class earners which are the vast majority of tax payers, the more they will need huge profits to tax. We are to the point where shafting the worker to get huge profits gives the politicians the tax revenues they need for social programs for the “needy.” However, they are creating more “needy” with the very same policies so it becomes a catch 22.
But, once the nation hits bottom, I think many things that will help will be popular and possible. What will make us hit bottom? We are pretty sure of some of them but, the problem comes that we don’t know when or how bad it will actually get.
It could be next year or five years or a decade or 2 decades. The longer it is, the worse they are saying it will be. It could be a continued decline of the dollar and hyperinflation. It could be a loss of our standards of living or a depression that lasts years. It could be triggered by foreign nations refusing to loan us any more money for our deficit spending or more business leaving or investment money leaving.
There are so many variables that nobody can predict when or how bad but, as the GAO points out and as the Social Security Administration points out and Chairman Bernanke points out, the U.S. economy and fiscal policy is “unsustainable.”
Mr Konop,
Thanks for finally endorsing my position: that restricting imports of the shoes that poorer people are able to buy is unethical.
David
Nice to see you back!
Thanks.
Nice to see you’ve shifted gears, too!