The steady stream of recalls over the past year has made it clear that our country's product safety net has a gaping hole. We, at Consumers Union (the publisher of Consumer Reports) are glad that President Bush has appointed a task force to address the onslaught of hazardous imports, but we’re disappointed with the progress it has made so far. 

A September 10th interim report by the President’s Interagency Working Group on Import Safety presented almost no concrete ideas but only vague generalities about a new strategic framework which, from our point of view, won’t stop lead-painted toy trains or contaminated seafood from entering the United States. And the report makes no mention of the additional resources needed by our federal watchdog agencies. We think that’s a critical omission.

At an October 1st public meeting, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Levitt, who chairs the Working Group, said that "we can't inspect our way to safety." We respectfully disagree. As one measure to close the gap in the the safety net, we need more inspections -- by the manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers, as well as government watchdog agencies, to make sure that goods are safe before they reach consumers. The Food and Drug Administration inspects less than one percent of the foods we import and the Consumer Product Safety Commission has only 15 inspectors to cover hundreds of ports of entry. We need to strengthen the entire supply chain and make sure there is adequate policing of our ports. 

CU's testimony to the Working Group laid out an 8-point action plan to help ensure the safety of our imports:

1. Provide increased resources to government safety agencies to prevent unsafe products from crossing our borders.
2. Hold importers, distributors and retailers, as well as manufacturers, accountable for bringing unsafe products to the market by requiring pre-shipment inspections and testing to ensure product safety.
3. Develop U.S. government-administered, third-party safety certification programs for all products.
4. Develop a product traceability program for both country-of-origin labeling for food and consumer products, as well as for all components and ingredients.
5. Require that importers post a bond to ensure they have sufficient resources to recall their products should they prove dangerous or defective.
6. Give all agencies with enforcement authority the power to levy meaningful civil penalties for manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers who fail to comply with regulations, and criminal penalties for the executives of those companies who knowingly and repeatedly jeopardize public safety.
7. Authorize mandatory recall authority for all government agencies.
8. Require all government agencies to publicly disclose information pertaining to safety investigations and reports of adverse events.

Don Mays, senior director of product safety planning and technical administration for Consumers Union, testified, “The number of foreign-made products being recalled in the U.S. has doubled in the last five years, helping to drive the total number of recalls in this country to an annual record of 467 last year. Chinese-made products account for 60 percent of all consumer-product recalls, and 100 percent of all toy recalls so far this year. Clearly, we need to find a better way of preventing unsafe products from crossing our borders and ending up in the homes of consumers.”