• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

The China Debate Heats Up

Mike

Well-known member
Made in China: Chinese imports are everywhere you look

By Kym Klass




China is a part of your life.

Look at the bottom of your Starbucks mug: Made in China. The tag on your Luxury Springmaid comforter: Made in China.

The Motorola Q smartphone, sunglasses, the U.S. flag. China, China, China.

And that's just scratching the surface: Wilson tennis balls, the Oster 6-slice toaster oven, Protg luggage, a Sunbeam coffee pot, forks, Lance Armstong's Livestrong yellow bracelets, Faded Glory jeans, Sparco binder clips.

Oh, don't forget the wok.

"Everything is from China," confirms Jenny Johnston of Wetumpka.

All that's missing from your daily walk through the Bicycle Kingdom is the Great Wall.

These days, though, it's a walk that fewer and fewer Americans want to take. Their trust has been shaken by the recall of a growing number of products made in China. The most recent was Tuesday, when Mattel Inc. recalled about 19 million toys with lead paint and loose magnets.

In June, the product pulled from the shelves was toothpaste that possibly contained a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze. The month before that, it was catfish treated with a banned antibiotic. And the month before that it was pet food made with contaminated rice protein.

Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks is a leading critic of Chinese imports, which government figures show Americans spent almost $250 billion -- yes, billion -- on last year.

Sparks and his counterparts in Mississippi and Louisiana grabbed national headlines when they banned the sale of all Chinese catfish in their states.

"We are a global world, we are going to have trade, but I don't think we should let other countries produce things that we don't allow here," Sparks said. "I want us to have safe food, our children to play with safe toys. I want you to be able to brush your teeth with safe toothpaste and for our dogs to have safe food."

Products made in China make up "the large majority" of imports recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the watchdog agency's acting chairman, Nancy A. Nord, told Congress last month.

"These imports have strained the agency's resources and challenge us to find new ways to work to ensure the safety of imported products that enter the stream of commerce," Nord stated in written testimony to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

The commission, she stated, has a four-part plan of action: developing strategies with the commission's Chinese counterpart to exchange inspectors and information on product safety, working with Chinese manufacturers directly and increasing surveillance and enforcement at U.S. ports and updating U.S. statutes.

Also at the federal level, President Bush has created a panel comprised mostly of Cabinet members to review current import safety practices and determine where improvements can be made.

The Working Group on Import Safety will look at what is being done to promote import safety in the exporting country, by U.S. importing companies and by federal, state and local governments, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The panel's initial recommendations are due to the president by mid-September.

As of spring, the federal government inspects less than 2 percent of imported fish, vegetables and fruit but regularly finds -- through those inspections -- food unfit for human consumption, according to The Associated Press.

"If they're only going to check 2 percent," Sparks said, "you ought to look at the violations in that 2 percent."

For food scientist Jean Weese, the responsibility for safety lies with the American importing companies -- not with the government. The Chinese and U.S. governments simply don't have the resources or time to test every product, said Weese, who teaches at Auburn University and works for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

"The U.S. does send in inspectors," she said, "but there's no way they could test all the food. If they did, we would have no food. It is up to the company bringing in items from China (to determine) that those items are safe."

Weese believes consumers also need to play a role in import safety and advises them to read product labels. Not all labels, however, disclose the country of origin, she said.

"A whole bunch of other products are being brought in and sold under our labels," she said. "That happens more and more because labor is so cheap, especially in China."

The only ways to know without a doubt where food comes from, according to Weese, is to either grow it or buy it from a farmer's market.

"Everything we ate, we grew," Weese said of her own childhood. "Now that's not the case. You get food at the grocery store and don't know where it comes from."

Sparks thinks the White House recognizes the importance of accountability, particularly on the part of the country of origin.

"We've got to put some of the responsibility on the people who are sending it to us," he said. "There ought to be drastic measures taken at that time if they aren't."

Unlike Sparks, Weese doesn't believe that importing nations will be as aggressive on safety as the American consumers and the government want.

"We're hoping that other countries' standards will meet our expectations and our U.S. standards," she said.

Sparks vows he will remain aggressive in protecting Alabamians from unsafe imports of all types, especially food, and from all countries.

"Folks in Alabama don't want to eat that garbage," he said. "And as long as I'm commissioner, I'm going to catch it at the door and send it back."

montgomeryadvertiser.com
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Chinese Blankets Recalled Over Chemical
By RAY LILLEY 08.22.07, 2:13 AM ET



WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Chinese-made blankets containing high levels of formaldehyde have been recalled across Australia and New Zealand, the distributor said Wednesday, amid rising global concern over the safety of products from China.

The voluntary recall by Australia-based Charles Parsons came two days after New Zealand launched a probe of Chinese-made clothing after scientists found dangerous levels of formaldehyde in woolen and cotton garments.

The New Zealand Ministry of Consumer Affairs said Wednesday it would start a program to test for formaldehyde in clothes next week as part of its probe, while acknowledging the country had no standard for formaldehyde levels in textiles - a concern of retailers.

A range of Chinese exports - from pet food to toothpaste - have come under international scrutiny in recent months. Toy company Mattel Inc. (nyse: MAT - news - people ) issued its second recall of Chinese-made toys this summer because of lead-tainted paint and tiny magnets that could be swallowed by children.

Formaldehyde - a chemical preservative that gives a permanent press effect to clothes and is also used as an embalming fluid - can cause problems ranging from skin rashes to cancer.

Charles Parsons declined to release the total number of blankets involved in the recall, but spokesman Mark Bilton said "there's a lot" in Australia and about 800 in New Zealand.

Tests had shown the formaldehyde level in the "Superlux" label blankets was "above the European and U.S. standards. There are no standards in Australia and New Zealand so it's a voluntary recall," Bilton said.

Independent tests had revealed the chemical's content was "less" that 1,500 parts per million - the maximum level permitted in Germany - but "we've decided not to get into those details," Bilton said.

An official at China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, a quality watchdog, said the case was under investigation. My A**

Meanwhile, government research agency AgResearch said it was swamped by clothing companies wanting tests on Chinese imports. Scientists testing clothes for TV3's "Target (nyse: TGT - news - people )" consumer watchdog program discovered formaldehyde concentrations up to 900 times above the safe level.

Many companies had complained that they had no information about what constitutes safe levels of formaldehyde, said Lorraine Greer, AgResearch's textiles division testing laboratory manager.
 

Clarencen

Well-known member
Yep, most everything you can buy today is likely to have been made in China. Back when I was a kid, the only things we bought that was made in China was firecrackers.
 

mrj

Well-known member
Years ago, before so much 'stuff' was imported from China, when I went into fabric stores my eyes would burn, and I would start sneezing. People running the stores would say "Oh, that's just the formaldehyed the fabrics are treated with".

It has been several year since I've detected that odor, but never thought to ask why it isn't used any more, or if they simply clean the fabrics to get rid of the odor before putting them in the stores.

mrj
 

Mike

Well-known member
Years ago, before so much 'stuff' was imported from China, when I went into fabric stores my eyes would burn, and I would start sneezing. People running the stores would say "Oh, that's just the formaldehyed the fabrics are treated with".

Do you have any health problems now?

If so, could that formaldehyde could be part of the cause?

You might never know.......................
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Our fool's paradise of cheap products
Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, August 26, 2007
The Chinese toxic products scandal ought to teach North Americans a major lesson, and it isn't that we need better inspection procedures. What we really need is a major rethink of our economic model.

We have created a temporary fool's paradise of cheap goods where everyone seems to win. Manufacturers get low production costs that fatten profits. Retailers' costs are kept down, too, and they can sell more stuff if it's cheap. Consumers always want a so-called bargain.

This kind of cheap-is-good thinking is damaging the economy and putting our health at risk. We've all read about the toxic toys, the faulty tires, the contaminated pet food and the poisonous toothpaste. None of it should come as a surprise. It's well known that China has lax environmental and safety standards and little interest in improving them. To be fair to the Chinese, they are under pressure from North American companies to deliver goods at ridiculously low price.

Cheap offshore production seems great, for a while. The trouble is, corporations and retailers haven't stopped to ask who will buy all their stuff once people are unemployed or forced into minimum wage jobs.

Since trade with China opened up in 2001, manufacturing jobs have been disappearing from North America. Again, no surprise. A living wage in North America is dramatically higher than it is in China. The people making the lead-contaminated toys for Mattel were working 10-hour days six days a week for between $125 and $190 a month. You would have to pay a worker here at least that much a day.

Corporations have been living in a fantasy world where they can ship jobs overseas but still sell products at home at a good profit. It's brilliant until the effects of that kind of thinking work their way through the system and the people who you need to buy your stuff no longer have the money.

In a bit of poetic justice, the strategy has come full circle for Wal-Mart, a company that has led the way in importing goods from
China.

Wal-Mart sales are down and the CEO has admitted that their customers are simply short of money. No wonder. Many either have no jobs or bad jobs.

Maybe Wal-Mart will have to move all of its retail operations to China, where the jobs are. Uh-oh, the Chinese don't have much money either, because companies like Wal-Mart pay so little for Chinese goods. We've created a downward spiral where goods become cheaper and cheaper, but we have less and less money to buy them.

We haven't seen the worst of the China problem yet. Once western countries have lost their production capacity -- and we're nearly there -- the next step will be for China to raise the prices of its goods. We will be reduced to economic colonies that supply raw materials and buy consumer goods, but don't make the value-added stuff ourselves.

What's to be done?

The solutions offered so far are of little value. North American politicians like to imagine a future in which all of us have advanced university degrees and participate in the "knowledge economy." Think it's going to happen? What will happen is that the middle-class people who relied on decent manufacturing wages will be pushed into low-paying service jobs. That's already the case for tens of thousands of Canadians. It won't affect people in government and well-paid economists, though, so they don't see the problem.

Same goes for imported BEEF or MEAT into Canada, US. It's well known that China has lax environmental and safety standards and little interest in improving them. The Same for other COUNTRIES
 
Top