Wall Street Journal (11.6.07).

White House Issues Plan For Safety of Imports

JANE ZHANG, JOHN D. MCKINNON and CHRISTOPHER CONKEY

The Bush administration, responding to a wave of recent food and product recalls, announced its most aggressive regulatory proposals yet on policing imports. But much of their success depends on congressional action, and some lawmakers and outside experts already contend they are inadequate.

"We need to do more to ensure that American families have confidence in what they find on our store shelves," President Bush said Tuesday. "They have the right to expect the food they eat, the medicines they take or the toys they buy for their children to be safe."

The initiative aims to steer the nation toward a prevention-based regulatory system that targets the riskiest products. It calls for giving more authority to agencies that regulate food and consumer goods, improving data-gathering on imports, and increasing cooperation between agencies and with U.S. trading partners.

The Food and Drug Administration, for example, would be granted power to require manufacturers and importers of "high risk" products to take steps to prevent contamination and other problems. The FDA could require producers and importers of such goods to certify they comply with FDA standards. The FDA could bar imports if it is given no access or only limited access to production records. The agency would also be able to mandate recalls on tainted products, something it can't do now.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission would be able to require more companies to conduct tests to make sure that their products comply with mandatory safety rules, and to boost penalties for violators. To increase penalty risk for violators, the Department of Homeland Security could require higher bonds paid by importers.

The report was crafted by a White House panel of cabinet-level officials from 12 agencies. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, who headed the panel, said early in the process that the government wants to "build safety into the products that we purchase every step of the way."

A senior administration official said today's proposals won't have any cost estimate or personnel request, but that they may be considered as officials prepare the president's 2009 budget request. The official said the administration also is prepared to work with Congress and trade partners to make it work.

The proposals represent a significant shift in the administration's approach to product-safety regulation. Since 2001, for example, FDA has enacted only a few food-safety regulations.

"For many years we've relied on a strategy based on identifying unsafe products at the border," Mr. Bush said. "The problem is that the growing volume of products coming into our country makes this approach increasingly unreliable."

Officials have scrambled to adjust in the wake of dozens of recalls involving toys, tires, and tainted pet-food ingredients. Many of the products came from China.

Some congressional Democrats welcomed the change. Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.) said that for years the administration resisted calls to give FDA the power to require recalls of tainted products. White House support for such authority now will make it easier for Congress to act, he said.

Others are more skeptical. Rep. Diana DeGette (D., Colo.), another advocate for mandatory-recall authority, said it wouldn't work unless it comes with a system that would enable the government to trace how contamination or other problems occurred in the production chain. It was unclear whether the proposals would include what is called trace back.

Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the proposals would be ineffective if not adequately funded.

Michael Taylor, a research professor at George Washington University School of Public Health, said the proposals didn't go far enough. For example, preventive controls would cover only high-risk foods. "The problem is, you don't know whether it's high risk or not unless you know how it's produced," he said. "I don't know how they can decide what is a high-risk food. We need preventive controls on all foods."

Cal Dooley, president and chief executive of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said he is pleased with the administration's prevention-oriented approach. "There [is] broad consensus among our members that they are willing to support a carefully crafted mandatory-recall proposal," he said.

The White House plan is unlikely to mollify critics of the CPSC who are quickly moving ahead with legislation to overhaul an agency tasked with regulating 15,000 types of products ranging from toys to all-terrain vehicles. It typically relies on businesses to comply with voluntary standards and has come under fire this year amid a wave of lead-tainted toys and other high-profile recalls.

Nancy Nord, the commission's acting chairman, proposed her own overhaul plan to Congress, with which the White House proposals have much in common. The White House would make it illegal to sell a recalled product, and would raise the cap on penalties the CPSC could levy against companies that violate safety rules, as Ms. Nord proposed.

Some in Congress and product-safety advocates want independent third-party testing of many products to ensure they comply with mandatory standards, but the White House plan is unlikely to go that far.