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Toxic Toys, Fouled Food, Poisoned Pets
USW members know all too well the devastating effects of a broken trade system: the loss of jobs, shattered communities, staggering national deficits.
Now, nearly every edition of the daily newspaper or broadcast of the nightly news reveals there are more side effects that could harm every American — toxic toys, poisoned pet food, tainted toothpaste and an at risk human food supply are making their way into the United States from China and other places where there are little or no environmental and health regulations.
In early August, Fisher-Price recalled 967,000 plastic preschool toys made in China because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. The recall covered 83 types of toys including play sets, toy vehicles, figures and musical instruments. Many of the recalled toys are connected to popular children’s TV programs including Sesame Street, the acclaimed educational series, and Dora the Explorer, an animated series. Fischer-Price is a subsidiary of Mattel Inc.
In July, media reported that 180 food factories in China that make everything from shrimp to candy were shut down after inspectors found industrial chemicals such as formaldehyde, illegal dyes and wax being used in products.
Toxic baby bibs
That report came after thousands of pets died from poisoned food, 1.5 million Thomas and Friends toy trains made in China were recalled because its paint contained lead, and after Chicago area grandmother Marilyn Furer tested her 3-month-old grandson's Chinese-made baby bibs and found they had alarmingly high levels of the poison.
Furer alerted the California-based Center for Environmental Health and further testing led to the recall this spring of tens of thousands of Baby Connection brand bibs sold at Wal-Marts across the nation. Some 60,000 vinyl bibs were recalled in Illinois alone.
"It was incomprehensible to me that bibs with lead in them could be on our marketplace shelves. A deep sense of betrayal overwhelmed me along with great sadness when I thought of babies possibly already damaged by this lead poisoning from baby bibs," Furer said.
"Each parent, each grandparent should correctly be outraged, infuriated and picket-ready angry that this was allowed to happen by our government." Furer says her story should be a wakeup call for those who think a cheap price tag is worth abandoning American manufacturing.
She's called on the government to toughen its trade policies and product safety laws to better protect children from dangerous imported items.
Trade debate intensifies
As consumer pressure to toughen trade and product safety laws mount, the U.S. trade deficit with China hit a record $233 billion and counting. The deficit has grown at 20 percent or more every year.
Some on Capitol Hill are pushing the Bush administration to take a tougher stance on product safety and China's unfair currency advantage. China's yuan is consistently undervalued, making its exports less costly for American consumers.
U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, called for an import czar to oversee consumer protection from Chinese imports.
"It's bad enough that we have a record trade deficit with China. It is even worse that there is a dangerous quality deficit threatening the safety and health of American consumers,'' Schumer said.
China has stockpiled more than $1 trillion in U.S. assets as a result of its booming export business. The U.S. economy could be vulnerable if China decides to dump dollars in the event of a trade war, some lawmakers and economists warn.
Recalls mount
Meanwhile, the product safety concerns continue. A recent Chicago Tribune analysis revealed that since 2004, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued 303 recalls for children's products, including 94 toys. Of those recalls, 218, or 72 percent, were products made in China.
While imported food and other products reach record numbers — they've doubled since implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization agreements — the Bush White House has cut the number of Food and Drug Administration inspectors every year since 2003.
A new report by watchdog Public Citizen says the government tests only .6 percent of the food being imported into the United States and that the only effective way to truly protect Americans is to change the nation's trade policies.
Shoddy food safety regulation isn't the only problem. The Administration is proposing closing seven of the FDA's 13 laboratories that do health and safety testing, and has overseen the shrinking of the Consumer Product Safety Commission to about 400 workers, less than half of the agency's staffing levels in 1980.
Deadly imports
The tainted product scandal first captured the attention of U.S. consumers last year with front-page newspaper reports of dogs and cats dying from pet food made with a toxic additive.
Some 24.3 million tons of Chinese wheat gluten laced with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, were sold to a major pet food maker that supplies North America. The resulting pet deaths led to a massive recall and a public uproar.
Serious questions were also raised about the safety of Chinese-made tires after two Pennsylvania passengers were killed in a vehicle crash caused by separating tire tread.
As many as 450,000 Chinese-made tires sold in the U.S. lack a key safety feature — a gum strip or thin layer of rubber that binds belts of a tire together. Without it tire treads can separate.
The faulty tires were manufactured by China's Hangzhou Zhongee Rubber Co. and distributed in the U.S. by Foreign Tire Sales, Inc. under the brand names Westlake, Telluride, Compass, and YKS.
Calls for hearings
The scary statistics about unsafe imports, particularly toys, prompted Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar to call for a congressional investigation. She said the number of recalled Chinese-made products has doubled in the past five years.
"As a parent of a 12 year-old and as a member of the Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Insurance and Automotive Safety, I am alarmed by these statistics and concerned that the risks our children face in playing with these unsafe toys are not being adequately addressed," Klobuchar wrote in her request for hearings.
For China, the product safety scandal is a public relations nightmare, and observers said it could lead to sympathetic hearings for U.S. legislators interested in toughening trade regulations.
"This is going to play against China in the larger political picture,'' said Merrill Weingrod, head of China Strategies, which advises companies on doing business with China.
And the problems aren't unique to the United States. Other countries have banned Chinese-made toothpaste while Japan and the European Union have pushed Beijing to improve inspections of goods sold globally.
China has a history of product safety problems at home, too.
At least 14 people died after taking the prescription antibiotic Xinfu, one of several medicines that were tainted with unsafe ingredients.
That led to the execution of the former head of the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, who was convicted of taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies.
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council Executive Director Bob Baugh says it's time for the nation's dangerous trade policy to change. He says the huge trade deficit is costing Americans jobs and putting their safety at risk.
"People want to act like this is an act of God. Or it's like the weather and you can't do a damn thing about it," he said.
"And that's a flat-out lie. This trade system is a system that is run by rules, and the set of rules have been designed by global corporations who do this in their own self-interest."
Acting U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairwoman Nancy A. Nord said in July she was preparing regulatory proposals that could mandate broader inspections of imports and stiffer penalties for ignoring safety rules.
The Republican appointed by President Bush is drafting the proposed changes, which would require importers and manufacturers to certify that products comply with regulatory standards.
At press time there was no word from the White House about whether it would support the plan. In the past, the Administration has generally favored loosening business regulations.
USW working for 'all of us' After telling her story to the Steelworkers' POWERcast, Furer, a former
postal worker, was so impressed with the union's various efforts, especially those to fight for fair and safe trade, that she joined the USW's Associate Member program.
Among other things, the USW is fighting to put an end to presidential Fast-Track authority over trade deals, drawing attention to the assassination of trade unionists in Colombia and elsewhere, and is pushing an anti-sweatshop bill (H.R. 1992) in Congress that would prohibit goods made in sweatshops and with child labor from being imported into the U.S. marketplace.
"I can readily see that the United Steelworkers membership has a tremendous influence and power contained within themselves to effect great contributions to a safer and fairer environment for the average American," Furer said. "You are working on behalf of all of us."
Safeguard Your Children
High Cost of Cheap Goods
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TOXIC TRADE
