May 1, 2007
Food Imports Often Escape Scrutiny
By ALEXEI
BARRIONUEVO
Truly fascinating graphic omitted
Early in the 20th century, the safeguarding of food at
American ports often amounted to inspectors from the Food
and Drug Administration prying open containers of molasses or sugar and
examining them for mold or insect parts.
The
F.D.A. has come a way since then. But not much more.
Last
year, inspectors sampled just 20,662 shipments out of more than 8.9 million
that arrived at American ports. China,
which in one decade has become the third-largest exporter of food, by value, to
the United States,
sent 199,000 shipments, of which less than 2 percent were sampled, former
officials with the agency said.
Now, as
F.D.A. inspectors travel to China
to investigate the source of contaminated pet food that has killed at least 16
dogs and cats and sickened thousands of others, critics in Washington
are warning that the agency is woefully understaffed and underfinanced to keep America’s
food supply safe.
“The
public thinks the food supply is much more protected than it is,” said
William Hubbard, a former associate commissioner who left in 2005 after 27
years at the agency. “If people really knew how weak the F.D.A. program
is, they would be shocked.”
Globalization
and new manufacturing capabilities have changed the makeup of the food that
Americans put on their table. Food processors in the United States are buying a greater
number of ingredients from other countries, becoming more of an assembler in
the nation’s food supply chain.
“With
globalization, American food processors are turning to less-developed countries
to get food ingredients because they can get them so much more cheaply,”
Mr. Hubbard said.
To be
sure, the F.D.A. has a number of procedures aimed at identifying problems with
imported foods. Last year, the agency visually inspected over 115,000 shipments
in addition to sending samples of over 20,000 shipments to a laboratory for
analysis.
Still,
the number of food inspections has lagged even as the number of food imports
has shot up in recent years. Shipments more than doubled to an estimated 9.1
million this year from 2000, and are more than four times what they were in
1996. They have also doubled in value to $79.9 billion since 1996, according to
the United States International Trade Commission.
Congress
is scheduled to tackle the agency’s financing issues and food-safety
concerns as part of a broader hearing today of the House Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform.
The
F.D.A. employs only about 1,750 food inspectors at ports and domestic
food-production plants. There are so few inspectors that most domestic plants
get a visit from an F.D.A. inspector only once every five to 10 years, Mr.
Hubbard said. Unlike meat-processing plants overseen by the Agriculture Department,
foreign food-production plants are not regularly monitored by the F.D.A.
Tommy
G. Thompson, the former secretary of health and human services, expressed
deep concern about the nation’s food supply when he resigned, for
unrelated reasons, in December 2004.
“For
the life of me I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our
food supply because it is so easy to do,” said Mr. Thompson, who is a
member of the Coalition for a Stronger F.D.A., a lobby group in Washington, and is running
for president. He said he worried “every single night” about
threats to the food supply.
Mr.
Thompson’s concern stems from a growing gap between a flood of imports
and a weakened food inspection regime. The F.D.A., which is responsible for
monitoring 80 percent of the country’s food, inspects barely 1 percent of
the food shipments arriving annually at hundreds of ports throughout the
country, according to government statistics.
After
Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Thompson persuaded Congress to add 600 more inspectors,
increasing the total F.D.A. field staff for food, drugs and medical devices, to
about 4,000. But since then, the agency’s budget has not kept pace with
inflation and the staff has decreased to 3,488 — fewer than the 3,500 in
2002.
Three
spokesmen at the F.D.A. did not respond to phone calls and e-mail seeking
responses to questions about the agency’s staffing and inspections.
The
latest episode of food contamination has alarmed many lawmakers in Washington. Senator
Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois,
sent a letter last Thursday to the Agriculture Appropriations Committee warning
that “F.D.A.’s resources have not kept pace with its
responsibilities, and increasing quantities of imported food products will
continue to stress F.D.A.’s capabilities.” Mr. Durbin requested
$650 million in next year’s Agricultural appropriations bill for the food
safety inspection program.
Mr.
Durbin noted that while the F.D.A’s budget increased over the past two
decades by three-and-a-half times, to $1.5 billion from $416.7 million, the
budget for the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention increased by more than 12 times and the National
Institutes of Health rose about five times.
More
than 130 countries ship food items to the United States. Canada, Mexico
and China have led the way,
with China shipping nearly
five times as much in food items to the United States as it did in 1996,
international trade commission figures show. Beverages, fish, nuts and fresh
fruits and vegetables are among the categories showing the biggest growth.
There
have also been increases in categories like residues and waste from food
industries; prepared animal feed; and “gums, resins and other vegetable
saps and extracts,” the trade commission said. “Emulsifiers”
or “stabilizers” found in chewing gums and candies, for example, come
from sub-Saharan Africa and Pakistan,
Mr. Hubbard, the former F.D.A. official, said.
Imports
of milling industry products like wheat gluten, while still small, have more
than doubled in value since 1996. Food processors use glutens to raise protein
content and thicken everything from candy bars to pet food.
“In
the same meal these days we may be eating food from several regions of the
world,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center
for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington lobbying group.
“These food processors may be looking for a cheap new source, but they
may pay for it down the line.”
Companies
like Menu
Foods that have discovered melamine, the product suspected of causing the
pet deaths, have been forced to recall several kinds of pet foods. In contrast
to the F.D.A., the Agriculture Department, which oversees meat and poultry and
monitors about 20 percent of the food supply, has about 9,000 food inspectors,
more than five times that of the F.D.A. With more clout, it can require a
foreign country to duplicate American slaughterhouse practices and send
inspectors to certify foreign plants.
Today
the risks can be chemical, pesticide-related or bacterial in nature —
none of which can be found by simply looking at the food, Mr. Hubbard said.
Large
food sellers like Wal-Mart
and grocery store chains have forced importers to sign contracts guaranteeing
that their food is not contaminated. Large food processors like Cargill have
put in place quality assurance programs in foreign-operated plants.
“The
large companies have already developed quality assurance systems that go across
national boundaries,” Ms. Smith DeWaal said. “But we need those
kinds of systems that are designed for medium and small companies that want to
trade, and ensure that they are being enforced and audited in the countries
where they are originating.”
Otherwise,
with the food-safety inspection system clearly overwhelmed, other countries
will increasingly look at the United
States as a dumping ground for substandard
food shipments, Mr. Hubbard said.
“The
word is out,” he said. “If you send a problem shipment to the United States
it is going to get in and you won’t get caught, and you won’t have
your food returned to you, let alone get arrested or imprisoned.”
