Hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, Panel I - Security of the Nation's Food Supply?

Interview

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REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The most important thing that this subcommittee can do is continue to be a watchdog for public health and safety. And I appreciate you holding this series of hearings.

Until quite recently, it never occurred to ordinary Americans that they needed to be concerned about the safety of the food they purchased from their neighborhood grocery store. But with products affecting ground beef, peanut butter, spinach, toothpaste, cough syrup, lettuce and even pet food in the news almost daily over the last year, people no longer assume, and rightly so, that what they buy is safe.

A recent survey showed an all-time low in consumer confidence in their food and who can blame them? Our food safety system was simply designed for a different era. In 2007 we are at the mercy of a food safety system that was designed for the 1970s. If you look at my chart, today we are importing a dramatically larger percentage of our food than even a decade ago. If you look at this chart, imports just from China have skyrocketed in past five years. In fact, according to the Congressional Research Service, imports of Chinese agricultural and seafood products alone have increased almost 350 percent since 1996 from $880 million to over $4 billion in 2006 alone. And this is just the imports from China. The red line would be even more dramatic if we looked at food imports from other countries as well.

At the same time that these imports have increased, though, the FDA's food budget has stayed nearly constant, but with more demands on that budget. The FDA's food division operated under a shortfall of nearly $140 million in 2006 due to a combination of increased personnel costs and new terrorism responsibilities. So that results, in essence, in a budget cut of nearly 25 percent. And, as Mr. Stupak said, this indefensible resource shortfall has been combined with mismanagement of resources at the FDA. While increasing numbers of imports have provided consumers with lower prices and more choices, I'm going to guarantee you if you ask my constituents, they never bargained for a corresponding decline in food safety with those lower prices. They want the lower prices, yes, but they also want us to ensure that the food coming into this country is safe for them to consume.

The rise in imports is not necessarily problematic in and of itself, but when you couple that with an outdated and underfunded screening system, we've seen the results and worse to come if we don't fix the problem. Adding more inspectors and finding a way to pay for them is one step, but there are other steps that we need to take and some of the members of this committee I'm sure will talk about it today.

We need to first of all ensure that safety is built into the system so that we eliminate contamination in the first place. And secondly, we need to build the regulatory framework required to effectively deal with an outbreak should one occur. We all realize this is not just an issue of imported food. The Topps beef contamination and yesterday's Sam's Club recall are just the most recent examples of problems right here at home. It seems like every time we have a hearing, there's been a recall about a day before and that just shows the extent of the problem.

There's a lot of legislation. Chairman Dingell has introduced a bill. I have a bill -- H.R.3484, the Safer Foods Act, which gives the FDA and USDA mandatory recall authority in the event of an outbreak, and there are other bills as well. Another bill I introduced was H.R.3485, the Trace Act, which sets up a food product traceability system so that we can trace where our food is coming from so that we can recall it and make sure it comes off the shelves. In today's digital age there's no reason we can't track food products from farm to fork. And the fact that many other industrialized nations are already doing it proves that point.

And finally, we can't pretend to reform our food safety system while keeping intact the complex regulatory structure in which 15 separate agencies share food safety jurisdiction. We must create a single food safety agency to ensure accountability once and for all.

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this hearing. I expect to hear the latest on what the FDA's doing to combat this crisis. I also am continuing to monitor the status, as you mentioned, of the laboratory-closing plan, because it makes no sense to consolidate food safety labs at a time like this.

We need to get a grip on this, both legislatively and in an oversight way, and I welcome this additional hearing in our series of hearings.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Nelson, you had told several other members that you toured a food laboratory in Beijing at the -- part of the China inspection and quarantine office is one of those. I take it that those offices are roughly the equivalent of an FDA district or regional office with a lab. Is that right?

MR. NELSON: That's correct.

REP. DEGETTE: Can you talk about what you saw at that food laboratory during your visit to that lab?

MR. NELSON: Well, none of us here is a scientist, much less a food scientist. But as you are aware, we've been to a number of FDA labs during the course of this investigation, particularly those that the FDA has threatened to shut down. And we have some acquaintanceship with what the various and the sundry machines look like. And the -- Beijing CIQ lab was equipped -- the visual remark -- the visual opinion of a non-scientist here -- was equipped at least as well as any lab, FDA lab we saw in the United States. And we have no reason to believe that their food scientists are any less qualified.

The question is, is Beijing atypical? And the response is "probably."

REP. DEGETTE: It's atypical?

MR. NELSON: Yes.

REP. DEGETTE: And why do you say it is probably atypical?

MR. NELSON: Because everyone -- not everyone -- people we talked to that -- either in the U.S. government or in our multinational corporations that have businesses throughout China that have knowledge of the way things operate throughout China believe that the quality of inspection, the quality of sampling, the quality of regulation varies widely among the provinces.

REP. DEGETTE: And how many of these labs are there throughout China?

MR. NELSON: Well, the Ministry of Agriculture told us there were 323 labs capable of certifying that food meets international standards. When we got talking to the AQSIQ, they reduced that number to 50.

REP. DEGETTE: What's the AQSIQ?

MR. NELSON: That's the agency in China that's responsible for food exports.

REP. DEGETTE: Okay. And what did they say?

MR. NELSON: They said 50.

REP. DEGETTE: Fifty. And you don't have any idea what the staffing levels or the technological levels of those offices are?

MR. NELSON: No.

REP. DEGETTE: Now, did you talk to the Chinese about the problems we've been having here? In particular, the melamine and the wheat gluten?

MR. NELSON: Yes.

REP. DEGETTE: Did any of you?

Mr. Barstow?

MR. BARSTOW: Yes.

REP. DEGETTE: Okay.

What is -- how did they explain that?

Mr. Wilfong?

MR. WILFONG: Yes, ma'am.

The wheat gluten -- we had along discussion with AQSIQ, with the vice-minister -- Vice-Minister Wei and it was repeatedly brought up that while China is willing to certify -- AQSIQ is willing to certify their food exports -- which they require all food exports to be certified -- tested and certified as food -- the wheat gluten incident -- the melamine and the wheat gluten was a way that since the U.S. does not recognize the certification -- the FDA doesn't require it for imports from China, therefore it's not looked for on the paperwork on this end -- the wheat gluten was actually exported from China as industrial use.

REP. DEGETTE: So they didn't consider that to be food. Is that what you're saying?

MR. WILFONG: On their end, it was exported as industrial use, not as food. And then the disconnect between the two systems on this end -- since that certification isn't required and looked for for a food import -- on this end, it was actually imported as a food product.

REP. DEGETTE: Oh, so it was a problem -- it was a problem in the two countries' standards and what it was called and what was required to be reported.

MR. WILFONG: Yes, ma'am. And that's their main contention is that they're willing to certify the food for exports -- their exports of food -- that they do certify all food they export, yet our lack of recognition and requirement for these certifications leaves a big loophole for violative companies to actually import into the United States or export to the United States.

REP. DEGETTE: And they say that's not their problem. If there's a loophole, that's not their problem.

MR. WILFONG: Oh, they recognize the problem. It was -- we had a -- probably a one-hour discussion with this vice-minister and he brought it up three times that they really wish we would recognize their certification. They're doing the work on their end. We're just not requiring that certification paperwork on our end.

REP. DEGETTE: Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, what about -- I mean, what about the processing system? I mean, that's at the lab. What about coming up to the export level?

MR. NELSON: What their system is -- and we watched this in the Beijing CIQ -- is an export certificate has to come from a farm or a food processor that is approved -- register and approved for exporting, and that requires some form of local inspection. So only a certain number of entities can bring a request for an export certificate to the CIQs. And allegedly, a CIQ inspector samples the proposed lot from the lot -- brings it to the CIQ laboratory where it is then tested to both Chinese and international standards. If it meets those standards, it is granted a certificate and that information is transferred electronically to the proposed port of exit so that people can feel assured that what has been tested is what gets loaded. Now, if the system worked like that, it is a very safe, closed system.

No one that we talked to in the industry really thinks that is works that well. But it certainly works better than products that are exported from China without those certificates. Now --

REP. DEGETTE: Thank you.

My time has expired.

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