Import safety demands attention

By MIKE LEAVITT

SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Many Americans may be wondering about the safety of the food they’ll eat this Thanksgiving or the toys they’ll soon buy for Christmas. Recent recalls have many of us asking questions about the things we buy. As a parent and grandparent, I’ve asked those questions myself.

It’s clear that the global economy is changing fast, and our safeguards on food and other products must change with it. I can say with complete confidence that Americans have one of the safest food supplies on the planet. But our safety system needs fundamental reform to keep up in a changing world.

This challenge is not unique to the United States. Last month I raised the issue with the ministers of health from eight of our closest allies. Every one of them expressed the same concern.

To meet the challenge, President Bush appointed an interagency working group to study how we can improve the safety of imported goods. I had the pleasure of leading the group, which last week presented a comprehensive action plan to make the products on which Americans rely safer.

Over the last few months I have crossed the country, visiting everything from freight hubs to fruit stands, examining everything from tire irons to gingerbread houses. We conducted the deepest and most robust examination of the total picture on imports ever done by the federal government.

Big numbers

The immensity of what it takes to fill American pantries was striking. We imported $2 trillion worth of goods last year through more than 300 ports with the help of more than 800,000 importers. The value of those imports is roughly twice the size of Brazil’s economy, and it’s expected to triple by 2015. It quickly became clear that ensuring safety is a task requiring the joint efforts of the public and private sectors.

To meet the new challenges, we proposed 14 broad recommendations, with 50 specific action items to carry them out. We must broaden our focus to cover critical points along the entire lifecycle of a product, from production to consumption. We need to roll back the borders to ensure that safety and quality are built in from the point of origin. Then we need to follow the product through the importation system right down to the retail level.

Here are some of the highlights:

Increased penalties: The cap on penalties for the Consumer Product Safety Commission is now $1.8 million. We have recommended raising the cap to $10 million.

Stronger certification: We need foreign regulators or independent groups to certify the safety of certain products before they reach the United States. This will allow us to focus more of our attention on products that need it most.

Enhanced enforcement: Voluntary recalls are usually enough to eliminate a safety threat, but the Food and Drug Administration should have broader authority to order mandatory recalls. At present, its recall authority excludes most food products.

Increased presence overseas: With our people on the ground in certain foreign countries, we can work closer with their governments and producers to prevent unsafe products from ever being shipped to the United States.

Sending out the message

We are already saying to the world, if you want access to American consumers, you must meet our expectations of safety and quality.

Bringing countries like China up to our standards must also be a priority. Recently we signed an agreement with the Chinese focused on enhancing the safety of children’s toys and other targeted products. Two more pacts are in the works: one on food and feed, and another on drugs and medical devices. The goal is to sign both next month at the Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing.

We are also making changes at home to ensure the safety of both imported and domestically produced food. The FDA has developed a new Food Protection Plan that takes the same comprehensive, cost-effective, risk-based approach as the Import Safety Action Plan, emphasizing prevention, intervention and response.

The American people have reasonable expectations that the products they buy are safe. These efforts will help us meet those expectations by continually improving our protections as the global economy continues to expand and change.

X Mike Leavitt is U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.