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Do we Need an Import "Czar" ?

A

Anonymous

Guest
Legal/Regulatory News
U.S. needs an "import czar," senator says

By Tom Johnston on 7/3/2007 for Meatingplace.com


Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is calling on Washington to create the office of "import czar" to protect the United States from unsafe products following a spate of harmful imports from China.

A staunch critic of China, Schumer wants the czar situated in the Commerce Department, and with direct oversight of the safety of imported goods, a task he says the Food and Drug Administration and other federal bodies have failed to perform properly.

"There are more than a half dozen federal agencies responsible for monitoring, testing and blocking dangerous tainted shipments," Schumer said. "This maze includes cabinet level departments, independent agencies and administrations within executive agencies, all operating with different regulations, rules and protocols."

Schumer says an import czar would coordinate and monitor the daily efforts of the different federal agencies charged with protecting consumers from unsafe imports

China, meantime, is working to revise its food-safety protocols after international outcry over several snafus, including the shipment of wheat flour laced with melamine, which wound up in pet food throughout the United States.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec07/china_07-03.html

China has it cheap ,but it will make you a medical case .
DONALD STRASZHEIM, Vice Chairman, Roth Capital Partners: Well, Margaret, there is a widespread issue there, and the problem is that none of us really know how serious it is. In China, they do not have a history of providing this kind of information broadly among the public, so the public there doesn't know. They don't have a real regulatory regime or history of regulatory regimes that include inspection and monitoring and enforcement of laws.

When this was product and food consumed domestically in China, the world didn't care about it. But as your set-up piece pointed out, now that these products are sold around the world, we and others care. This is a big issue going to get, I think, much, much bigger.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, is the problem in China one of, shall we say, covering or producer incompetence? Or do they know exactly what they're doing and it's driven by profit?

DONALD STRASZHEIM: Well, there is a profit motive here. If you can substitute chalk for the milk powder and still sell it as milk powder, the chalk being cheaper, that's a way for unscrupulous businesspeople to raise their profit margins. That's part of it.

But the bigger problem is that enforcement is so difficult because China's economy is so fragmented. There are three million producers of apples in China that goes into the apple juice that we buy. Half of our apple juice comes from China.

Not sure what is in the apple juice,then don't use it!
 
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