- Trading Away Food Safety Implementation of Trade Rules
Allows USDA to Bypass US Food Safety Laws While Border Inspections Drop
Dramatically
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- 7-10-3
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- New Public Citizen Report Documents How U.S. Implementation
of Trade Obligations is Leading to USDA Approval of Questionable Imported
Meat
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- WASHINGTON, DC -- United
States trade commitments under the World > Trade Organization (WTO)
and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) > have resulted in federal
food safety officials allt; a 65 percent drop in the rate of imported meat
and poultry being inspected.
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- On average between October 2001 and September 2002, 2.5
million pounds of meat were rejected per quarter, but in the last quarter
of 2002, just 700,000 pounds were rejected. More than a million pounds
of uninspected imported meat may have made it onto supermarket shelves
in late 2002 with the USDA's seal of approval.
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- The Public Citizen report, available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/PCfoodsafety.pdf,
is the subject of a 2:30 p.m. briefing today at the Capitol, room HC-9.
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- "Equivalency" is an obligation of several WTO
agreements, as well as NAFTA. It is designed to allow goods produced under
different rules and regulations to be imported into another country with
minimal inspection at the border. Before the United States entered the
WTO, the USDA > required other countries to have standards equal to
ours, and Environment Program.
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- "There is a disturbing pattern of country after
country's meat being declared > equivalent despite being produced in
plants not required to obey the same rules as U.S. plants. It's time for
Congress to protect consumers by requiring imported meat to meet U.S. standards."
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- In 2000, Public Citizen began filing requests under the
Freedom of Information Act for the documentation underlying meat inspection
equivalency determinations for a number of countries. In response, the
FSIS produced audit reports for 12 countries and allowed Public Citizen
to review several files but claimed that other information was so widely
dispersed that providing it would be burdensome and time-consuming. The
agency demanded that Public Citizen pay more than $2,000 before gaining
further access.
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- In 2001, the FSIS began posting the most recent audit
reports and sothe United States a part of the WTO, made statutory changes
to the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection
Act that in 1995 resulted in minor, seemingly insignificant changes to
U.S. meat and poultry inspection regulations by replacing the word "equal"
with the word "equivalent." Since 1995, the FSIS has declared
the meat inspection systems of 43 nations "equivalent" and the
countries eligible to export fresh meat or processed meat products into
the United States, although not all 43 countries are currently exporting
meat to the United States. In 2002, the amount of imported meat and poultry
exceeded 4 billion pounds.
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- Following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the USDA
and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received money to increase
border inspections, but in 2003, the FDA is projected to inspect just 1.3
percent of food imports into the United States. th "unsubscribe pubcit_press"
in the message.
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- > Please visit our website at www.citizen.org
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