I went to buy a multi-vitamin for my daughter this week and discovered it was virtually impossible to find out where the ingredients were actually made. Labels said soothingly that the vitamins were "Marketed by..." or "Distributed by..." a "natural" or "health" or "natural health" sounding company with an office address in the U.S.
It turns out that many vitamins -- including 80 percent of Vitamin C sold in the U.S. -- are now imported from China.
And while food imports are rising by 10 percent per year and drug imports by 13 percent per year, Congress decided last month it was necessary to cut $285 million -- about 12 percent -- out of the Food and Drug Administration budget.
If enacted, these cuts will make it virtually impossible for the FDA to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011and to protect American consumers from growing food and drug hazards.
The dangers of an increasingly globalized supply chain for food and drugs are already visible: we see increased food safety problems; new contaminants entering food systems; the proliferation of counterfeit drugs and vitamins; medicines and supplements with misrepresented ingredient concentrations (either out of incompetence or intentional duplicity); and a number of high-profile adulteration cases (such as the scandal with melamine-tainted baby formula).
This year, the FDA plans to inspect about 600 overseas facilities, out of the 189,000 registered to produce food for import into the U.S. That number is striking, in light of the fact that the FDA also reports that "80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in medications sold here are manufactured elsewhere... Nearly two-thirds of the fruits and vegetables... and 80 percent of seafood -- eaten domestically come from outside the U.S."
About 15 percent of the food we currently consume in the U.S. is imported. And all signs indicate that we are in the early stages of a long-term trend. Food imports are likely to increase in step with the staggering increases in global food prices. Double digit price hikes for basic food commodities in the past year have put intense pressures on retailers and producers to lower costs of food and pharmaceuticals, driving more companies offshore in search of lower costs. Imports of meat, seafood, fruits, vegetables, dietary supplements, vitamins, herbal remedies and Over-The-Counter and prescription pharmaceuticals will likely grow even faster in the coming decade.
Simple foods and vitamins are now as likely to come from complex global supply chains as nearby farms.
As Michigan representative John Dingell said this week, the "FDA has the responsibility and tools to prevent and detect food-borne illnesses without the money to back it up. Year after year devastating outbreaks -- E. coli in peppers, Salmonella in peanuts, melamine in milk-- sicken or kill innocent people. And with each incident members of Congress and the American people ask 'Where was FDA?'"
The FDA says they are "committed to substantially and fundamentally revising its approach to global product safety and quality." And that the "FDA will undergo a paradigm shift to become a global agency."
Unfortunately, these pronouncements feel a little like Blockbuster Video announcing they have plans for going digital.
The FDA does now finally -- with the signing of the Food Safety Modernization Act -- have the authority to require food importers to verify that their foreign suppliers have adequate safety controls in place. The FDA also now has the power to establish a third-party program for certifying foreign food facilities comply with U.S. food safety standards, to require certification as a condition of entry for certain high risk foods, and to reject entry of food if the foreign facility or country refuses an inspection by the FDA.
Unfortunately, as the Los Angeles Times reported this week, "China's food scandals are becoming increasingly frequent and bizarre" with cases of glow-in-the-dark pork, exploding melons, fake eggs and tainted baby food.
So none of these new FDA mandates will mean much without the resources and wherewithal to implement them. With imports and scandals rising, and government funding decreasing, the FDA will have to focus their limited resources to protect public health.
Let's hope they took their vitamins and they're ready for the challenge.
Follow Dara O'Rourke on Twitter: www.twitter.com/daraorourke
Otaviano Canuto: Food Prices and the 7 Billionth Baby
China food prices spike as floods ruin farmland | Reuters
As Imports Increase, a Tense Dependence on China : NPR
Maybe the Asian world once cared that their lives hinged on sustaining the earth but that was then. Now as you drive through that part of the world that was once so pristine and beauthful you are just shocked at how they callously rape the earth's resources and the offhanded way people puke on the earth and take what they want out of it. And yet no one expects the earth to revolt. Amazing!
The mass pollution there to me is an indicator of the loss of the Chinese people's will to live so they put up with anything. Their docility is sad.
Time for a vegitable garden, fruit trees, four chickens and two milking goats.
To bad most people can't do this.
If the gov't would DEMAND that any food sold in the US that has ANY component not coming from the US be prominently marked with a specific symbol on both front and back, this would at least allow consumers to know. One wouldn't have to scan the list of ingredients for orange juice, let's say, to find that some of it comes from Brazil or some other place.
“Prominent” is the key here. Did you ever try to read the numbers on a plastic container to see if it is recyclable? Darn near impossible in some cases.
I still won't eat seafood because I believe (and I can be wrong) that much of it comes from polluted waters especially after the BP spill.
Our own gov't appears to be the "enemy within" at times because it does not enforce rules and regulations that are already on the books. There is going to be a rude awakening one of these days and I am afraid many will be hurt.
I mean we can't even bury our veterans in the correct graves. How's that for competence?!
Follow One Man Roaring on Twitter: http://twitter.com/omroaring
We have so few aquaculture producers in the US because our bureaucrats and environmental activists are preventing the creation of aquaculture businesses and associated jobs. Even no-brainer things like issuing oyster growing permits for the Chesapeake bay can't get NOAA off its bureaucratic rear end. Oyster farms not only produce food and jobs, the oysters filter the bay water and cleanse it.
You Don't Know Where Your Drugs Come From And Neither Does The FDA; U.S. Imports 90 Percent Of Its Antibiotics (And Vitamin A) From China
"China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest manufacturer of bulk drugs, vitamins and nutritional supplements and is now exporting a large portion of its production to the United States. Tens of millions of American consumers have no idea that the majority of the over-the-counter drugs they are purchasing now originate in China, where there are "relatively few regulations related to pharmaceutical exports in comparison to industrialized economies," according to a report commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The increasing dependence on China for active pharmaceutical ingredients and nutritional supplements "presents a range of issues for concern."
In 2008, China produced $25.7 billion worth of bulk drugs (up 23 percent from 2007), and exported $17.6 billion of that output (an increase of 30 percent over 2007). "For many years, China has been exporting more than half of its bulk drug products to nearly 200 countries," according to the study by NSD Bio Group. "As a result, China-sourced raw ingredients have a growing impact on the global pharmaceutical market."
The country is now the world's largest producer of acetominophen used in Contac, Benadryl, Excedrin, Sudafed, Theraflu and Vicks, among others. It is the world's major producer of Vitamin C,..."
NONSENSE!!!!
Just as long as we don't let "the gays" get married !!!!!! Let freedom ring!!! Praise Jeebus!!!
I checked on whether the raw ingredients or manufacturing of some medications I took were sourced from China, occasionally used ones and a regular medication, and all the companies except one actually returned my request and denied having accessed raw ingredients from China and denied manufacturing there, as well. When the one refused to answer, I took that as a verification that they did and my doctor and I found an alternative which fulfilled the need and one where the company would respond. It is impossible to do that when one needs a medication on an emergency level.
I want to mention that the medication which refused to reply to me had a supply problem created due to "problems" in their manufacturing process just a short time after my inquiry and the official line was that either the medication had become "contaminated" or the line "compromised" which could well mean that the FDA discovered that a raw ingredient was not what it should have been, was contaminated with something, such as bacteria, dirt, debris or whatever, or was not in the concentration required.
We would all be best to demand stricter laws and testing on all raw ingredients for medications, drugs, or the vitamins and other things which are imported from China, as well as foodstuffs. Their track record is just too appallingly checkered.