Chinese
poison - at
request of
corporations....
|
K): Yep, the Chinese are sending
inferior goods and poisonous foods
into
Canada and the U.S. But at whose
request? Who decided that
contracting
with a country known for its tawdry
workmanship, its lack of concern for
health and safety, and its penchant
for money (aka 'prosperity) was the
way to go?
CORPORATE AMERICA and CORPORATE
CANADA - that's who. Cheap labour,
big
profits. That's all that these
companies cared about. Now
Canadians and
Americans (and their pets) are dying
or being injured because of that
liaison with a country that should
never have been trusted with
foodstuffs
or items of safety. And while we
blame the Chinese and their greed
for
what they're sending into our
country, we forget who decided to do
business with them for the same
reason - greed.
'Global trade' is making a whole
lot of north american companies
very, very
rich. It's also going to kill or
hurt a whole lot of Canadians and
Americans in the pursuit of those
riches. We need to rethink
unregulated
trade from ANY country in
'developing countries'. If the U.S.
border can
be closed for one dead cow, it sure
as hell can be closed for everything
from unsafe vehicle tires to poisons
in foods. PURPOSEFUL poisons in
foods.
________________________
Trade Deficit in Food Safety:
Proposed NAFTA Expansions Replicate
Limits
On U.S. Food Safety Policy That Are
Contributing To Unsafe Food Imports
July 2007
Executive Summary:
Revelations of significant safety
threats posed by imported foods have
dramatically heightened public
awareness that current policies are
failing
to protect consumers from exposure
to dangerous and potentially deadly
imported food and products. The
recent discovery of tainted imports
of pet
food ingredients that sickened or
killed some 39,000 animals should be
a
wake-up call for all Americans. A
steadily increasing amount of food
on
U.S. dinner plates is imported. The
massive growth in imports and
current
trade rules that limit domestic
safety standards on imported
products and
border inspection are forcing U.S.
consumers increasingly to rely on
foreign governments to regulate the
food and other products they will
bring into their homes.
[....]
Today nearly $65 billion in food
goods are imported into the United
States annually nearly double the
value imported when the North
American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and
World Trade Organization (WTO) went
into
effect in the mid-1990s. Today,
over 80 percent of the seafood
Americans
eat is imported. In the NAFTA-WTO
era from 1995 to 2005, seafood
imports
increased 65 percent. Between 1995
and 2005, shrimp imports alone
jumped
95 percent.
[...]
This report explains the rules
incorporated into the proposed FTAs
with
Peru, Panama, Colombia and South
Korea that limit food safety
standards
and border inspection. The
agreements prioritize facilitating
access for
imports over consumer safety -
requiring the United States to rely
on
foreign regulatory structures and
foreign safety inspectors to ensure
that
food imports are safe.
Unfortunately, data show that many
foreign
regulatory systems are simply not up
to the task.
[...]
Contrary to what consumers
believe, the vast majority of
imported foods
that end up on the dinner plates of
U.S. consumers is unexamined and
untested. Today, the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), estimates that
it
will only conduct border inspections
on .6 percent of the food that it
regulates (vegetables, fruit,
seafood, grains, dairy and animal
feed) at
the border in 2007 - down from an
already disconcerting eight percent
prior to NAFTA and WTO.
FDA data makes clear that
Americans are three times more
likely to be
exposed to dangerous pesticide
residues on imported foods than on
domestic
foods. Even though FDA inspectors
have only examined a tiny fraction
of
imports in recent years, inspectors
have caught numerous dangerous
substances in imports from Peru.
The FDA has found illegal
pesticide residues on fruits and
vegetables, the
parasite cryptosporidium in salad
vegetables and basil, unknown and
unapproved
drugs and capsules (including filthy
and unapproved shark cartilage
capsules and unapproved cats claw
capsules), Listeria in avocadoes,
and
unsafe color additives in chocolate
bon bons and soft drinks. Similarly,
they have caught dangerous products
from Panama.
Only 11 percent of beef, pork
and chicken imported so far in 2007
has
been inspected at the border by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA).
While over 80 percent of seafood
eaten by Americans is now imported,
in
2006, the FDA was able to inspect
only 1.93 percent of total seafood
imports. The vast majority of these
inspections were visual. For 2006
only .16 percent of the 859,357
shipments of seafood were refused
entry
into the United States.
The estimated annual incidence of
infection with Vibrio, a diarrheal
disease associated with seafood,
increased 78 percent from 1996 to
2006,
according to the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC).
Vibrio is associated with eating
oysters, which are imported
increasingly
into the United States from South
Korea, Colombia, Peru and other
nations.
[...]
Similarly, FDA inspectors have
documented problems with Panamanian
seafood
exports to the United States
including Listeria in smoked salmon,
Salmonella in shrimp and lobster
tails, poisonous swordfish and shark
loin,
and obvious filth in dried, fresh
and frozen fish.
[...]
While currently the four
prospective FTA countries
governments have the
ability to challenge U.S. food
standards in
government-to-government WTO
disputes, the proposed FTAs would
newly empower the over 10,000 food
exporters currently registered from
Peru, Panama, Colombia and South
Korea
to pursue challenges directly
against U.S. food safety laws if
they
believe such laws undermine their
FTA-granted foreign investor rights.
This is not a speculative threat.
Already under NAFTA, Canadian cattle
producers have used such foreign
investor private enforcement rights
to
demand $235 million in compensation
from the U.S. government over the
U.S.
temporary ban on Canadian beef
imports when several Canadian cattle
were
initially found to be infected with
mad cow disease.
The pending FTAs establish new
committees to speed up
implementation of
mechanisms to facilitate trade
rules, including equivalence
determinations, that require the
United States to permit imports of
meat
and poultry products that do not
meet U.S. safety standards.
Once so-called equivalence is
achieved, products to be imported
into a country
must only meet the standards of the
exporting country - not those of the
importing country.
[...]
While many consumer products,
such as Thomas the Tank Engine toys,
have
mandatory country-of-origin
labeling, consumers are none the
wiser
regarding many food products because
the implementation of a federal law
passed in 2002 requiring
country-of-origin labeling on beef,
pork, lamb,
fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood
and peanuts has been delayed time
and
time again by intense industry
lobbying.
The report concludes with tips
for consumers on how to protect
themselves
from unsafe imported food. However,
these recommendations cannot replace
desperately needed reforms to U.S.
trade and food safety policies
including the specific
recommendations in this report.
- Global Trade Watch
http://groups.google.com/group/can.politics/browse_thread/thread/3cda44002ff9f7aa/bb118ac5134e65da?lnk=raot