It makes your stomach churn a bit to learn that the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with protecting the nation’s food supply, allowed at least 1 million pounds of suspect seafood from China to enter our country without inspecting it — despite issuing an alert that was supposed to trigger automatic inspections of the food, according to the Associated Press.
It doesn’t inspire confidence.
FDA officials put the imports on a suspect list after concerns they might be tainted with banned carcinogens or antibiotics.
Critics point out the obvious: If the FDA doesn’t have the resources to address known risks, how many unknown risks is it letting slip into our food supply?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Jed on Let immigrants run
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
59 Comments
“The FDA itself admits that this seafood needs inspection, but then doesn’t have the capability to inspect it,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a critic of the FDA’s food safety record, said in reaction to the AP’s findings. “This is an example of government failure at its worst.”
The FDA, just like the CPA, has been gutted. In a republican world, consumers don’t need to be protected. That gets in the way of capitalism.
We can buy all the poisoned food from China that we want, but we can’t buy cheap drugs from Canada. What a bizarro world the republicans have given us.
I worked for the FDA as a contractor. When I told my supervisor that the testing methods were not correct, his reply was:
“We are the FDA we don’t have to follow the rules”
In another instance, a fellow co-worker complained that the reagents used for assay were 13 years out of date. The reply was”
“You’re old and we hired you”
This culture of arrogance should explain why the contaminated food gets through. The FDA just does not care. It’s simply a stepping stone for people to get higher pay in the phamaceutical industry. They are just there to “punch their ticket”.
Spot-on comments above.
Long established agencies like the FDA are seldom politically based but bureaucratically built from the mind up with their own style of bureaucracy.
Ask any government employee about the quirks of their agency and how its bureaucracy often stands apart from the what the American people desire or even sometimes demand.
This is why we have elected people such as State and Federal representatives who are there to do the heavy lifting on such issues.
This kind of pressure has resulted in the past of a change of subjective inspections of food related industries into that of a risk analysis based inspections of said industry.
This was brought about by the failures that subjective evaluation can be influenced by factors irrelevant to the purpose of the inspection.
That is, the health and well-being of the American Public needs a system that is not subject to bureaucratic bumblings nor one of food industry executives saying “trust us.”
Risk analysis needs to be applied to the import of items as well as the actual inspection of the items. This will allow the U.S. government to set priorities.
It’s time to ask our representatives to make changes so our evaluation of imports is based on the sound reasoning of risk analysis and not a bureaucratic “dart throwing” technique.
I think Randy, unwittingly I’m sure, has made a good case for the government to get out of the food inspection business.
Kansas makes an argument for reform of the current process, but it would be best to get rid of the FDA and USDA inspections.
Why? The government doesn’t have the same powerful incentives that people do.
When government fails at something and people get sick or die, the responsible agency usually gets more money and power.
In the private sector, people lose their jobs, stockholders lose the value of their shares, banks and bondholders lose their investment, companies lose their reputations, entrepreneurs go bankrupt.
Which is a more powerful and reliable motivating force?
Easy fix. Stop trading with China. How many times will they poison us before we get a clue?
India is giving Big Pharma heartburn. The Indian government is rejecting U.S. patents for minor modifications of older drugs, on the principles that A. the modifications don’t represent real innovation, B. their sole intent is to evade patent expiration and block generic competition, and C. people’s lives are worth greater consideration than inflated corporate profits.
Big Pharma is also at odds with the tech sector here. Growing numbers of tech companies are demanding an end to the practice of people filing patents for products that they do not actually manufacture and market, but just sit waiting for somebody else to build products that inadvertently incorporate the patented material, and then demand big chunks of the “infringing” products’ profits.
In fact there are lawyer-run companies (patent-holding companies, derisively called “patent trolls”) that purchase controlling interest for patented, but as yet unbuilt products. Sometimes the terms of purchase call for the inventor to get a share of proceeds if at a future time, the patent holding company finds infringers and collects licensing fees or lawsuit settlements. Other times, the holding companies simply pay a small patent-purchase up-front cash price and then lawyers alone, not inventors, capture all the licensing fees and lawsuit settlement monies.
There is growing pressure to restrict patent grants to truly innovative, “non-obvious” inventions. The drug industry is fighting this tooth and nail. The majors have thousands of patents on minor-variation compounds that have been synthesized and patented solely to keep them OFF the market. For example, Company A markets synthetic congeners of penicillin. It synthesizes and patents slews of variants just to prevent its competitors from synthesizing and marketing any of these.
You might think that drug companies would jump on marketing somewhat-better drugs than what they currently sell. This isn’t the case. It can cost $500 million to take a new drug from synthesis through animal testing, and then finally human clinical testing, the last being a crapshoot. Even if all these hurdles are surmounted, now you have to retool your mass-drug-manufacturing facilities, similar to what auto manufacturers have to do when they develop new car models. If you are already making a billion dollars a year with what you have, why undermine your current products’ sales?
The majors LOVE the indiscriminant use of antibiotics in livestock production. They don’t make money selling out-of-patent generics to hog farmers. But hogs do a fantastic job of accelerating the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which find their way to humans, and then human disease treatment requires ultra-expensive patented antibiotics, because the hog-mutated bacteria are now resistant to expired-patent drugs.
How about importing diseases from China? Are drug companies conspiring to bring them here? I would never make this allegation But are they happy about it? How could they not be pleased? Suppose some infectious agents in China are drug-treatable. How much money can drug companies make selling drugs in China, versus, selling the drugs at ten times higher prices here in the good old patsy U.S. of A?
FDA isn’t inspecting imported food to keep the bugs out. Instead, it’s letting them in, and Americans get sick, and have to buy antibiotics at world-leading prices.
The government is much better at watching other people work, not at doing work. Perhaps a better system of import inspection would be with private companies doing the work under contract from the customer. The FDA could then simply regulate those companies.
The FDA is just an agency of the Federal government. Who would expect them to be efficient or even capable.? Not me.
Well, it was USDA that FOUGHT Creekstone in their attemps to do their own inspections and certify their beef as “mad cow” free.
SO, WTF when regulatory agencies STOP businesses from inspecting, certifying and selling the highest quality possible?
OH, and dont forget, all this regulatory failure started under St. Ronnie Raygun.
It’s true. republicans say government doesnt work, and then they set out to destroy it just to prove their point.
Girl, how can you say Republicans set out to destroy government, when the budget has grown very rapidly under our current president?
Government is larger and more instrusive than ever.
Republicans are just as addicted to government as are Democrats. It’s just that they want a little different form of government.
Not very different, I would say.
This administration is way too far in bed with China. Most favored nation status? Exactly how many times can you poison this country before you lose it? Exactly how many patents can you steal before we wake up?
Get real folks, we are China’s bitches. We lose our jobs, technology, and even the lives of our dogs to these a$$holes. Until we stand up to them, why would they change a thing? They get lots of jobs, free technology, unbalanced trade, and most favored nation status. Life is good for the Chinese. Why do we keep making it good for them?
SolDevVB-
I think it has far less to do with this administration, or any other. It has to do with the mindset of the American People. Buy whatever is the cheapest. WHo cares where it came from. WHat is the cheapest price? I need more stuff!. It has to be cheap!
“Each year the people of the United States write a check to subsidize China, one of the most brutal, anti-American regimes in the world. Lately it has been in vogue for everyone in Washington to eagerly denounce the egregious abuses of the Chinese people at the hands of their communist dictators. Yet no one in our federal government has been willing to take China on in any meaningful way. ”
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst081406.htm
Ron Paul 2008
Any other candidate taking up this issue?
So what can commoners like us do? We have corporations driven by stock holders to make a quick buck – YESTERDAY- and damn the future – I want to be paid NOW.
We have consumers already facing higher prices in the stores. It is sickening to see how much milk and eggs have gone up (at least up here in the great white north).
It is exceedingly hard to FIND products made in the US and if you CAN find them, they are inferior and more expensive.
So from the grass roots, how do we drag America kicking and screaming back into being a proud nation?
Buy locally grown produce, from the producer, Buy locally grown meat, from the producer. Buy locally grown eggs. Quit buying manufactured and processed foods. Learn to actually cook. Buy local. If US products are more expensive, suck it up and buy it.Form a coop to produce more locally.
Realize that with every “law” or regulation passed, there is a financial cost. Way the benefit. Then decide.
Well first off Sol, with all due respect, you cant DRAG anyone anywhere. They have to want to go. So rather than focus on methods of dragging, how about appealing to their wants.
Which of course, in america, means dollars and cents. If you could show them that being an islamofacist would save them a few bucks, they’d all be wearing turbans in a week.
The only way you can DRAG folks is with force or fear. I think the Patriot Act and the NSA lawless spying programs are the force part.
The fear part? That is split with the churches. The religious right has that whole fear mongering down. They are constantly afraid and wetting the bed, and they insist others do the same, or their “god” isnt happy.
Fear and force. The unholy alliance between religion and government. Throw in some good ol’ fashioned greed and hate….
….and you have AMERICA, 2007
“So what can commoners like us do? We have corporations driven by stock holders to make a quick buck – YESTERDAY- and damn the future – I want to be paid NOW.
So from the grass roots, how do we drag America kicking and screaming back into being a proud nation?
Posted by: SolDevVB | August 09, 2007 at 09:10 AM ”
Many of the problems arise from the common-man’s view of the stock market. Too many people watch day to day stock prices, the Dow Jones, mutual fund returns, etc. and buy and sell stock based on those things.
Corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns, so they make decisions that will have the greatest effect on stock prices.
The only way to combat that is to not play the stock market game. Either invest in direct stock purchases of companies with a mindset that you want to be an ‘owner’ of that company, what I think of as the Warren Buffet method, or stay out of the stock market. That means no money markets, no 401k, no company stock purchases.
“Realize that with every “law” or regulation passed, there is a financial cost. Way the benefit. Then decide.
Posted by: littlejohn | August 09, 2007 at 09:15 AM”
Amen to that!Let us all step back and rationally analyze the ramifications of governmental actions before acting on our gut reflexes.
I’m curious, brian, can’t you invest in the stocks of companies you consider “good” in a 401k account?
With regard to laws and regulations: most, I would say, start by taking away our natural rights, or, they force us, through coercion, to serve someone else. That alone is the reason to eliminate almost all government that we have.
And expecting government to act rationally? Government doesn’t have the same set of incentives that people face. Consider the news stories about the terrible condition of our nation’s bridges, and the called-for response: more money to those who have been in charge of the bridges. Is that rational? The rational response is to dismiss the government from responsibility for bridges (roads and highways too) and to look elsewhere.
So then anonymous, you DONT support inspection and regulation of our food supply?
We should just “trust” the corporate factory farms that do it?
We should just “trust” china not to send us tainted drugs or toys with lead paint.
We should just “trust” IBP not to sell us mad cow beef processed to ensure the maximum amount of e coli?
mmmmmm… ok……
“I’m curious, brian, can’t you invest in the stocks of companies you consider “good” in a 401k account?”
Maybe you can, but not that I am aware of. Any 401k offering I have seen has a selection of funds. These funds shift their stock holdings to give the maximum return to their shareholders – this means buying and selling stocks based on return.I have not saw direct company stock investment in a 401k, but it may exist.
If you carry it to an extreme, it does sound crazy.
But we trust government to inspect, and don’t we have failures?
And when government fails, what is the response? So isn’t is crazy to continue to “trust” (as you put it) government?
Government inspection crowds out the market for private inspection. If there were private inspection companies and they had a failure, their reputation as an inspection company would be in tatters. Few would trust their inspection, and they would likely go out of business.
But when government inspection fails, can we fire the government?
Further, if I were in charge of a food producer, and my products that were inspected by the government caused someone harm, my defense would be that my products met government standards and passed government inspection, so if you have problem, go see the government.
So I am not calling for no inspection. Rather, I am calling for no _government_ inspection.
Yes, brian, I think you are correct; ownership of individual stocks may be rare in 401k plans. Perhaps employees should ask for mutual funds that invest in socially responsible companies to be made available to your plan.
You’ve made a pretty good case for the deregulation of retirement plans! Then you could invest in what you want.
Well, I guess bushco has certainly given us an example the government officials can be bribed and bought off by business with no repercussions.
Same with sebelius. She’ll sell out our water and evirnoment to the highest bidder. The water regulators are a fine example of being bought off by big ag and the democratic party in kansas.
So.. I guess it doesnt matter if government inspects or private sector inspects, I would have to agree that they have all been bought off by the same money, and need I say, they all serve the same masters.
Meet the new boss same as the old boss….
When did it happen that all of the government oversight agencies turned into just another extension of beaurocracy? We need desperately to get back to when they actually did their job of protecting the public.
When businesses and our own government play politics in these organizations, this is what happens. We can go back to making the USDA, FDA, OSHA, and other oversight organizations legitimate again. WE NEED this to happen.
Does size matter?
Is it a factor that the USDA, FDA, OSHA and others are very large and have extremely large areas of operation? Would it make more sense to have State run entities instead of the Fed?
“When did it happen that all of the government oversight agencies turned into just another extension of beaurocracy?”
1980-88. St. Ronnie Raygun and his no regulations government. He cut the funding for every regulatory agency in the nation. Instead of IMPROVING regulation, as you suggest, he DESTROYED regulation.
“We can go back to making the USDA, FDA, OSHA, and other oversight organizations legitimate again. WE NEED this to happen.”
Well, yes we can pmom. But that would require voters to have half a brain. It would require kansas voters to STOP voting against their own economic interests.
And I think you have recent examples of how THAT’s working in kansas…
State regulators would be corrupted by sebelius and HER special interests just like K Street and the federal special interests have corrupted the federal regulatory agencies.
Do you want YOUR governor in charge of regulation?
Nope, I think pmom has it right. As long as we act like sheeple and fall for every political trick in the world…
…we WILL get the government we deserve. Piss poor.
It’s funny that people mention buying local food and making your own.
When I was in elementary school, I had always eaten home grown and canned food.
It wasn’t until the day that the teacher had each of the students in the class bring some canned fruit or a cake in for some school function (forget exactly what it was.)
My eyes were opened when I saw all those steel cans setting on the shelf in the back room and in my arms was a quart of peaches in a mason jar. I felt like a square peg in a round hole until the teacher remarked how beautiful the peaches I brought to school looked. Still…
“We can go back to making the USDA, FDA, OSHA, and other oversight organizations legitimate again. WE NEED this to happen.”
Yes, but that would cost money.Tax Money, God forbid!
I’m just saying….
All of those programs couild be funded better. but should they? Have you ever had to deal with some of the regulations these guys put out? Good god. They are horrible, and some are outrageous in pickiness, and in expense. But then, we get back to the other thread. Why Americans are so damn cheap.
Bush cuts the number of food inspectors at the FDA then these problems with tainted food increase. Another Bush failure.
http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2691/1/299?TopicID=1
Can we expect anything less from the Republicans? They want to protect us from terrorists but they can’t even protect our food supply. Time to kick them out and let the adults take over.
Even though the FDA misses some tainted food here and there, at least the keep those poisonous medicines from Canada out of our hands.I feel so safe.
You’ll be upset then Brian. The Democrats in the House voted to allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada. Bush will probably veto it if he has the chance.
I am sure there will be some drug lobbyists visiting with him to discuss it. Maybe they will join Cheney on a prescription medicine task force.
OSHA is not funded by the Government they have rolled into a free funded agency, they only operate on money they collect from fines.. also in Kansas the FDA agent is contracted from the local USDA agents.. so basicly you have one person per area doing USDA inspections and FDA inspections..
There should be a sur-charge assessed on all imported products to pay for a strong govt. regulated and inspection venue. It would serve to make foreign products less price competitive with domestic, and help insure that we are not being slowly poisoned. If we’re going to outsource our jobs and economy, the least we can do is make the importers pay for a safe product.
That seems reasonable Phantom. Somehow there needs to be assurance that the products are safe, at least the same level of assurance as consumers would have if the goods were made in the USA.
American manufactures build those costs into the cost of their products, putting a quality control charge of some sort on imported goods would level the playing field.
This should be done reasonably though, not the same amount across the board for all imports.
I am not convinced that private companies can do a better job of inspections then the government.I work in QA inspection and one of our biggest problems is wrestling with production managers on the quality of the products.The CEOs are always pushing for product production in trying to compete against globalization markets at the same time they purposely are putting on a show of being of high quality but sacrificing the quality of the products for the sake of production.In QA it is called “Management by Results”, which is bad for quality.
“There should be a sur-charge assessed on all imported products to pay for a strong govt. regulated and inspection venue. It would serve to make foreign products less price competitive with domestic, and help insure that we are not being slowly poisoned. If we’re going to outsource our jobs and economy, the least we can do is make the importers pay for a safe product.”
I like that! And exactly why don’t we? Wusses?
“There should be a sur-charge assessed on all imported products to pay for a strong govt. regulated and inspection venue. It would serve to make foreign products less price competitive with domestic, and help insure that we are not being slowly poisoned. If we’re going to outsource our jobs and economy, the least we can do is make the importers pay for a safe product.”
I like that! And exactly why don’t we? Wusses?
Posted by: Beck | August 09, 2007 at 03:09 PM
That would amount to a tarrif, which is what China avoids by holding Most Favored nation status… unless I am mistaken.
Sol, I think you’re likely correct. Should China enjoy this status? I don’t know; I suspect Boeing, e.g., would argue corporately, yes, while there are others who would argue the opposite.
Don’t meat packers have to pay to have FDA inspectors on premises full-time?
Why wouldn’t that work for _all_ commercial food producers, foreign or domestic? Why is it only US plants that are subject to round-the-clock inspection?
I’ll do you one better Tom, why the hell are we importing food? Surely we have enough to sustain ourselves.
Take food and drugs, toothpaste and deodorant, what ever the Chinese can poison us with and just buy local – at least within our own borders.
I might ask, SolDevVB, what grudge you bear against poor people?
After all, don’t we import some of these things because they’re cheaper?
And who benefits most from cheaper products?
People with money could afford to pay the higher prices that a ban on imports would cause. Poor folks can’t.
As I argued upstream, let’s get rid of ineffective government inspection and replace it with private inspection, performed by people who have an actual stake at risk, instead of government bureaucrats.
I believe a tarrif is assigned to control price competition factors, or to compensate an industry for damages from illegal dumping. I don’t see a problem for making a country pay for services we are forced to provide in order to ensure our health and well being. If they can demonstrate that their products have adequate quality control in production, and don’t cause problems, give them an exemption and use random sampling.
I think that we shouold either1) drop most of the regulatory stuff that hamper American businesses2) Add a tarrif to all imports, equal to the cost of all the regulatory stuff that American companies must comply with. That, my friends, is equal trade.
Littlejohn,
I agree.
I kind of agree with Sol, too, but I’m wary of that “anti-globalization” bandwagon.
I’d vote for 2. However, I think Americans have as part of their make up an attention to quality and safety from having lived in a society that promotes those qualities. I also believe that these qualities do not make up the third world mentality of their workers. Of course there are exceptions in America from greedy sociopathic corporate types and their minions. But for the most part, people I have worked with have had good standards.
Political points, fellow libs:
FDA major reform. Fire the top dogs; get new blood in there. Blood not beholding to business; blood that has the publics health in mind, not some CEO, COO, CFC, CIA, minded blotto.
Last post of the day, but a question to stumper.
If not them who? someone who has no ties to the industry? or any industry? Someone who knows nothing about the industry? Any industry? I understand your thought, but the devil is in the details, so what would be your proposal?
Littlejohn -A third party auditor.
Wiseman,
The problem is, inspectors need _experience._ You can’t just drag someone off the street and say “here, check this steer.” And the way inspectors _get_ that experience is by working in the industry or FDA in the first place.
At a certain point, we just have to trust. Or like Reagan said, “Trust but verify”
Tom, a third party auditor is someone with no ties to either party and I guess you did not see my earlier post at 1:57 pm.
Wiseman,
I know what a third party auditor is. But in specialized professions, those “third parties,” if they have any knowledge or experience at all, are going to have ties of some kind to the people they’re inspecting. And I did see your 1:57 post. What I’m saying is, the problem isn’t solvable by waving a magic “third party” at it.
Tom, most of our third parties auditors is government and the corporations own QA dept. and you are right it is hard to have someone that knows the industry without being involved with them.You can see how it all fits together; your government with corporations is pushing globalization, dollars speaks louder then anything.Your best auditor on the products is you, the consumer.You are the customer and you hold more power then any of them, you are whom they fear the most.
The FDA should just transfer the inspection of Seafood supply to the agency that has a long history and experience of inspecting meat products and that is the USDA.
USDA been doing beef, pork and chicken forever. Why not fish and seafood?