When I started here at CropLife® magazine in 1998, then Editorial Director Char Sine pulled me into her office on the first day.
“Hope you don’t mind, but we’d like to send you off to Washington next week to cover a meeting about the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA),” she explained. And so began a series of near monthly treks to see firsthand exactly how legislative policy “sausage” is made.
One of the souvenirs I have from my travels is a copy of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act as amended by the FQPA, a booklet-sized, 185-page tome in teensy type — frankly, pretty humble in comparison to documents such as the federal budget — but still plenty complex. To some, it’s a symbol of excessive governmental meddling. But to me, it’s a symbol of how much we value food and environmental safety that such a document was conceived and constructed. And after spending a year and a half listening to discussion and debate about its implementation, it’s something that a lot of people feel passionate about.
Which makes the recent consumer product safety scares coming out of China particularly troubling. As well as what I would call a fairly uninspired reaction from the general public.
Just to quickly review the events of recent months, we’ve so far found rat poison in pet food, anti-freeze in toothpaste, and lead paint in children’s toys in products coming from China. And while we’ve seen what I would term modest media reaction to these issues, the reaction pales in comparison to the daily barrage of media coverage and general public outrage that occurred in times past. Remember Alar? Dursban? 2,4-D? Listening to the media carry on, it seemed a miracle we were all still alive after having been exposed, even in the single-digit parts per billion.
Yet today, we can definitively trace the sickening of thousands of beloved pets (and potentially in feed that entered the food supply) directly to products from China and the story comes and goes like so many fires and murders and scandals we see on TV every night.
My question is, where’s the outrage? We spend billions of dollars on regulations in this country to ensure that we produce the safest and most abundant food supply in the world, then we bring in food and fillers from other places that are not adequately tested and effectively flush the entire thing down the drain. For what? Fifty cents for a box of cereal or a bag of dog food? Are you kidding?
China says it’s working on these and other issues of quality, but unfortunately, they are “working the bugs out” with the American people as the test subjects.
Sure, we test what’s coming in at some very small percentage of the total amount of product imported, but so far the biggest discoveries have been forensic — the stuff’s already in the market and consumed, and we’re trying to get it out, instead of stopping it from coming in the first place.
I’m not advocating any sort of ban, embargo, or trade limitation on China or anyone other country importing to the U.S. I would advocate much more stringent testing and iron-clad traceability, especially when it comes to anything that’s going into the food supply. If it forces up the cost of food, so be it. Otherwise, we might as well toss FQPA and its assurances of food safety right into the circular file.
