[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
THE THREAT OF CHINA'S UNSAFE CONSUMABLES
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 8, 2013
__________
Serial No. 113-25
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
TED POE, Texas GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MATT SALMON, Arizona THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina KAREN BASS, California
ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
MO BROOKS, Alabama DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TOM COTTON, Arkansas ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
PAUL COOK, California JUAN VARGAS, California
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania Massachusetts
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
RON DeSANTIS, Florida ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
TREY RADEL, Florida GRACE MENG, New York
DOUG COLLINS, Georgia LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
TED S. YOHO, Florida JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
LUKE MESSER, Indiana
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
TED POE, Texas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
PAUL COOK, California BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Mark Kastel, co-founder, The Cornucopia Institute............ 8
Mr. William Triplett II, author and consultant (former chief
Republican counsel, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations)..... 14
Ms. Patty Lovera, assistant director, Food & Water Watch......... 26
Ms. Sophie Richardson, China director, Human Rights Watch........ 43
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California, and chairman, Subcommittee on Europe,
Eurasia, and Emerging Threats: Prepared statement.............. 4
Mr. Mark Kastel: Prepared statement.............................. 10
Mr. William Triplett II: Prepared statement...................... 16
Ms. Patty Lovera: Prepared statement............................. 28
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 54
Hearing minutes.................................................. 55
Ms. Sophie Richardson: Material submitted for the record......... 56
THE THREAT OF CHINA'S UNSAFE CONSUMABLES
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o'clock
p.m., in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana
Rohrabacher (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I call to order this hearing of the
Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging
Threats. Today's topic is ``The Threat of China's Unsafe
Consummables,'' an emerging threat.
After the ranking members and I each take our 5 minutes to
make opening remarks, each member present will have 1 minute to
make some opening remarks as well, alternating between majority
and minority members and without objection all members will
have 5 days to submit statements, questions, extraneous
material for the record. Hearing no objections, so ordered.
Who could forget that agricultural interests were the
driving force behind various trading and trade-expanding
understandings that our country has had with the communist
Chinese regime in Beijing. Who would have thought that the
People's Republic of China would become a significant food
exporter, especially of fruits, vegetables, seafood, and dairy
products? The farming community, the agricultural industry puts
so much effort because they just saw this as a market for their
goods, never did they consider that these would be competitors
and competitors that did not have to meet the same standards
that they have.
Chinese industry has also become a major producer of drugs
and chemicals used in both medicine and food processing and
yes, and in manufacturing as well. Thus, the health and safety
not only of the United States and Europe, but that of people
around the world has become dependent on the quality of goods
imported from China. Yet, the task of inspecting and testing
Chinese goods is beyond the ability of governments. Considering
the magnitude of that challenge, it is beyond their ability to
do a good job or at least that is what I am suggesting. We will
hear from our witnesses what they think about that.
Astonishingly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
inspects less than 2 percent of the food imports from China.
This is a major security concern. Why? Because the record of
Chinese quality in their food production is extremely poor.
Indeed, CNN reported Monday that poultry workers moving to and
from wet markets and farms may be responsible for the spread of
the deadly H7N9 virus in China, read that, the bird flu virus.
We import poultry now to feed animals, but the FDA may soon
approve the importation of China poultry for human consumption.
Now does this move make sense at all?
Ronald Reagan once said of the Soviet Union, ``trust, but
verify.'' In regards to Communist China, however, we cannot
trust, nor can we verify. China producers are motivated to cut
corners, dilute content, counterfeit products to maximize
profits, and keep prices so low as to dominate export markets.
Chinese supervision and regulation is weak and corrupt. We have
the irony of a communist system that has spawned the most
predatory capitalism of all. The result is food that makes you
sick and drugs that will not make you well and could well kill
you.
Even the state-owned media knows the problem. Last October,
China Daily cited a marketing survey which found and I quote,
``Food safety is a top concern for Chinese shoppers, especially
regarding such produce as vegetables, meat, seafood, grain,
cooking oils, and dairy foods.'' If this is true within China,
then it should also be true for foreign markets. And a series
of scandals involving toxic chemicals and other fillers in food
products around the world confirm this. Yet, Chinese
agricultural exports continue to increase, driven by their low
prices.
The same is true in the pharmaceutical industry. There has
been movement, again unexpected, of much of that industry from
the United States to China. Just like in the agricultural area
we saw a whole industry shift over to China that was never
predicted by agriculture, while it also hasn't been predicted
by the pharmaceutical industry. Beijing has been allowed, for
example, to join the World Trade Organization which helped this
shift. This shift was motivated by a desire to cut costs by
using cheap Chinese labor and by avoiding expensive regulation.
This opened the door not only to lower quality output, but made
it easier for counterfeiters to infiltrate the supply side and
supply chains of our pharmaceutical products. Drugs with weak
dosages or no active ingredients at all endanger public health
and discredit treatment programs. Fake drugs undermine U.S.
efforts to treat illnesses in developing countries. For
example, the State Department has requested $650 million in
2014 to fight malaria in developing countries. Yet, half that
anti-malarial drugs that are on the market in South Asia and
Africa have been found to be counterfeit. And most of these
fake drugs come from where? China.
Fakes also threatened the campaign against diabetes and
other significant and debilitating diseases.
Besides the global health, safety, and security threats
created by unscrupulous Chinese business practices and the
corrupt lack of supervision by Chinese authorities, there is a
competitive issue as well. American farmers are the most
productive in the world and are held to rigorous standards. The
same is true of the American pharmaceutical industry which
creates the world's most advanced medicines. Yet, if U.S.
exports are defeated in the market place on the basis of lower
prices stemming from illicit cost cutting, then the American
producer as well as our entire economy will suffer.
Counterfeit products are often sold under the brand new of
the legitimate product such as Pfizer or Lipitor, or several
others. Indeed, there has been and there is hardly an American
company that has not been victimized by this Chinese larceny.
And when the product does not work, the brand is held
responsible. But yet it is not the people of that company that
has been making the product. It is a knockoff by some Chinese
company that has been permitted to do so by the Chinese
authorities that should be enforcing the rule of law.
Now if you end up having a Chinese company under the name
of another company, an American company or whatever, what we
have done is we have slandered the name of an American company
and we have slandered the ability of the people of the United
States and our system as well because we have basically been at
that point saying to the world this is what our products are
like, but it is not our product. This is something we have got
to stop if we are going to maintain the integrity and the trust
that the people around the world have in American products. Not
to mention we have got to stop it because there are people who
are being injured and killed because they are using these phony
products that are being manufactured by someone else other than
who is on the label.
Are there measures we can take to persuade China not to do
certain things or things that China can be persuaded to do to
safeguard consumers from dangerous exports? Or what steps can
we take or should we just ban all such goods from China from
the marketplace because they are inherently unsafe. Well, that
is a question we will have to talk about today. The production
and distribution of such critical goods as food and medicine
upon which life itself depends cannot be trusted unless there
is integrity throughout the manufacturing and supply chains. We
have gathered this panel of experts to help us decide what the
policy options are.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. With that, Mr. Keating, would you have an
opening statement?
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding today's hearing. From tires to toothpaste to toys,
Chinese imports account for more than 50 percent of the recalls
announced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And
China's monetary policies do not make it any easier for safer,
American-made products to compete with their cheaper Chinese
counterparts. Ultimately China's policies affect the safety of
our children, our parents, grandparents, and pets here at home.
Increasingly, the conversation in Congress has turned to
China as a rising super power that is increasingly investing in
emerging markets worldwide, but the fact of the matter is that
China still lacks the necessary governmental institutions based
in rule of law, transparency, and accountability to be able to
regulate its own products. Further, these institutional
weaknesses extend to the realm of human rights abuses and media
repression within China.
During the 2008 Olympic games in China, an official ban on
reporting ``all food safety issues'' banned media from
reporting on at least 20 dairy firms that were selling milk
products that contained the chemical melamine. That coverup
contributed to the deaths of six children and the illnesses
among 300,000 others. And when Chinese officials attempted to
enforce regulations which they have been doing as of late,
their institutional weaknesses come back to haunt them. Just
this year, in response to a campaign to crack down on marketing
sick pigs in China, the Ministry of Public Security has been
raiding farms, arresting violators, and then confiscating
unsafe pork meat.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations during the
celebration of the Lunar Chinese New York this year, the police
stepped up efforts to rid the market of tainted pork meat.
However, in absence of collaboration from other departments,
these well-intended efforts led to over 6,000 unmarketable dead
pigs being dumped into a local river. Thousands of carcasses
were discovered floating in the Huangpu River which supplies
drinking water to Shanghai's 23 million residents. The domestic
implications for this huge and incredibly concerning practice
are yet to be fully understood.
There are international implications as well. According to
the same Council on Foreign Relations report, in 2011 alone
China produced more than 50 million metric tons of pork
accounting for nearly half the world-wide pork production. And
unfortunately, we can easily list other instances like this
throughout China as well as one recall after another for
Chinese products in our own country here at home. For this
reason, and the fact that China has been extending operations
into developing regions of the world with even weaker
standards, I do agree with you that China's unsafe products
have the potential to become an even more widespread threat to
global health and global safety.
I hope that today's hearing will shed some light as to why
and which way we can proceed as a country to really protect our
consumers at home and protect consumers throughout the world. I
welcome our witnesses and look forward to their testimonies.
And with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you for that very provocative
opening statement. It gives new meaning to sweet and sour pork
you might say. I now recognize Steve Stockman, the outspoken
member of our committee from Texas.
Mr. Stockman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad you put
this hearing together. We have in our district, rice, catfish,
and pharmaceuticals. You can trust ours, and our labeling. And
someone who buys organic food and purchases organic food, and
now finds that the society which professes to be socialist and
caring, and not driven by greed, is actually driven by greed
and mislabels organic food and other products is very
Orwellian, I guess, to say the least. I thank you for holding
these hearings. I am looking forward to the testimonies of our
guests today. Thank you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. It is ironic that for
all of these years, the communists were talking about how
horrible free enterprise and capitalism is and here they have
turned their back on their own country while they still have a
government that claims allegiance to Marx and Lenin and they
just turned their back on this most predatory and awful example
of irresponsibility in the name of making a profit.
Now today we have four witnesses and what I am going to do
is introduce all four now and then we will each have about 5
minutes to give your presentation. Anything more than that we
will be happy to put in the record and then we will have some
questions and answers. First, we have William Triplett. He is
an author and consultant with great experience with China. You
have been a consultant for four decades now. Mr. Triplett began
his professional career with the American intelligence
community working China issues overseas. Later, he was the
Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the East-West
meaning China during the first Reagan administration. He served
for 9 years on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee reaching the post of chief Republican counsel to the
committee. His most recent--he has several books--is Bowing To
Beijing, published last year and he is a frequent contributor
to newspapers and professional journals.
We also have with us Patty Lovera and she is assistant
director of the nonprofit Food & Water Watch where she
coordinates the organization's food policy program. She has a
bachelor's degree in environmental science and a master's
degree in environmental policy from the University of Michigan.
Before joining the Food & Water Watch, she was a deputy
director of the Energy and Environment Program at Public
Citizen and a researcher at the Center for Health, Environment,
and Justice.
We have with us also Mark Kastel and is co-founder of The
Cornucopia Institute, a foreign policy research group based in
Wisconsin and director of its Organic Integrity Project. For
almost 20 years prior to the launch of this institute, he was
president of M.A. Kastel and Associates, a professional
practice that include political consulting, lobbying, business
development, and benefitting family scale farmers.
Finally, Sophie Richardson is the China director at the
Human Rights Watch, a graduate of the University of Virginia,
the Hopkins-Nanjing Program and Oberlin College. Dr. Richardson
is the author of numerous articles on domestic Chinese
political reform, democratization and human rights in Cambodia,
China, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Philippines and Vietnam.
Her book, ``China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence'' was published by Columbia University
Press and is an in-depth examination of China's foreign policy
since the 1954 Geneva Conference. With that said, we have our
witnesses with us today and we will start with Mr. Kastel.
STATEMENT OF MR. MARK KASTEL, CO-FOUNDER, THE CORNUCOPIA
INSTITUTE
Mr. Kastel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Mark Alan
Kastel. I am the co-director and act as senior farm policy
analyst at The Cornucopia Institute. We are based in
Cornucopia, Wisconsin.
Cornucopia is a tax-exempt farm policy research group. We
act as an organic industry watchdog.
We have long been concerned about the propriety of organic
commodities and finished products being imported into the
United States from China.
Mr. Chairman, many in this country, for good reason, based
on history, do not trust the Chinese to supply ingredients for
our dog and our cat food. Why should we trust these Chinese
exporters with food that we are feeding our children and our
families?
Besides any specific concerns and evidence regarding
organics, this is a country with endemic levels of commercial
fraud whether in intellectual property, the counterfeiting of
name-brand consumer products, or being engaged in industrial
espionage.
The organic marketplace was founded as an ethical
alternative for consumers seeking safer and more nutritious
food to serve their families. We looked at Chinese organics as
part of our research and investigation in preparing our report,
``Behind the Bean.'' We found that although there were many
exemplary U.S. manufacturers, the majority of the participants
in the organic soy industry were shifting to Chinese organic
imports. And in particular, we highlighted Dean Foods'
WhiteWave Division which manufactures the market-leader, Silk
soy milk. They threw U.S. organic producers under the bus by
asking them to match cheaper Chinese prices which they were
unable to do.
In Cornucopia's 2009 Soy Food Report, we estimated that as
much as half of all organic soybeans being sold in the United
States came from overseas, primarily China. It is probably
higher now.
We were told by domestic soybean buyers and processors of
food-grade soybeans that brokers came to them with a choice.
They had A beans and B beans. What is the difference? The
brokers told us that the A beans were from farms and suppliers
they had personally visited in China and they could vouch for
the authenticity of the product. And the B beans? Well, the
brokers had a piece of paper, a certification document that
says they are organic. And they are cheaper.
Most commonly we found that the ones that got purchased
were the B beans.
In February 2011, the USDA's National Organic Program
started informing the public of fraudulent organic
certificates, these pieces of paper that I referenced. They
found that of 22 fraudulent organic certificates since that
point in time, 9 were from China. The next highest country had
only three from India where we are also seeing an exponential
increase in organic imports.
And whether it is melamine contaminating processed food,
rat meat masquerading as lamb, or dead hogs floating down that
river you referenced, we don't trust--the Chinese don't trust
the food they are producing. Why should we?
The USDA and FDA inspectors are only examining as
referenced 1-2 percent of all food that reaches U.S. ports. And
what are they finding? A disproportionate number of serious
problems from China: Adulteration, unapproved chemicals, dyes,
pesticides, and outright fraud, fake food.
The remaining 98 percent that is not inspected, well, that
might be on your table tonight for dinner or at the restaurant
you might be enjoying.
The largest organic farmer cooperative in this country,
Organic Valley, is now exporting packaged milk to China. You
can understand why a growing, affluent cross section of the
Chinese populace is buying imported U.S. commodities. What do
they know that many in the United States don't know about the
safety of Chinese food?
The farmers I work for have names and they have a story and
they have a background and they are competing with these pieces
of paper. Organics continue to grow even in this tight economy,
but for the first time we are seeing a net loss in the number
of organic farmers in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain States and
we are losing thousands of acres of farmland. We can't compete
with the Chinese without a level playing field in terms of
aggressive certification and enforcement of organic law.
In conclusion, the Cornucopia Institute welcomes
congressional pressure on the FDA and USDA to fulfill their
mandates, to protect domestic farmers, organic consumers and
all consumers from the dangerous fraud in the importation of
food from China, India, former Soviet bloc states, or any other
country exporting poison to our shores and we hope that you
folks will adequately augment their budget and watchdog them to
make sure they are carrying out their missions. Thank you very
much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kastel follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. That was very
thoughtful. We will have some questions.
Mr. Triplett.
STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM TRIPLETT II, AUTHOR AND CONSULTANT
(FORMER CHIEF REPUBLICAN COUNSEL, SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN
RELATIONS)
Mr. Triplett. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and
Distinguished Ranking Member. I am William C. Triplett II, and
with the committee's permission I would like my prepared
statement put in the record and I will speak just briefly off
the cuff.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Certainly with no objection. Thank you.
Mr. Triplett. Last week, they had a lot of fun with the rat
meat story that was in the newspaper and on headlines and so
forth. Chinese Supreme Court Judge was quoted, ``The situation
is really gray and has indeed caused great harm to the
people.'' Certainly, he is right. And he is talking about the
Chinese people, but the obvious problem is that that stuff
comes to us, too.
There is three ways we can look at it. One is the
adulterated food issue. The second one is their deficient
health system. And the third one which I would like to talk
about a little bit is pollution for thee, but not for me. One
of the things we have known for a long time is that the Chinese
cadres had their own farms. They don't trust the food and so
forth and so on. That is number one. The farmers themselves
don't trust their own food. They won't eat what they produce,
so they ship it to another province. Rich people are leaving
the country and in the exit interviews they are being asked why
are you leaving and the answer is because of food safety and so
forth and so on. One of the other things is Chinese communist
officials even have special filters on the buildings that they
work in so that they don't have to breathe the foul air.
Now the issue of is this becoming our problem, I have a
graph in the prepared statement that shows that in the last 3
years, Chinese agricultural imports are going up by about $\1/
2\ billion a year. That is the first graph. And of course,
imports of poultry are going up at an even higher rate.
The question is can the Chinese solve the problem on their
own? I don't think that I know anybody who studies this closely
who really thinks the Chinese can handle it themselves. I think
the system is simply too corrupt and I think we are going to
hear that from several of the witnesses today and so forth and
so on.
I would like to turn to what the Congress and the committee
can do about it. First and foremost, I want to commend the
committee for holding this hearing. That is the alpha, if you
will, of the alpha and omega of solutions because without this
kind of a hearing, then this issue will get lost with the other
issues.
The second end of the issue is this is the omega. And that
is when China becomes a democratic country, then the people
will demand safe food and safe food for them will then
ultimately mean safe food for us. So we are between these two
ends. The question is what to do in the middle?
I have a lot of experience, as the chairman well knows, in
arms smuggling of Chinese to terrorist countries and groups and
so forth and so on. Smuggling is a real big deal. I would hope
the committee would encourage the usual suspects to find out
basically who is involved, who are the names, who are the
corrupt officials and so forth and so on who are engaged in
this food safety business. That is the first thing. Let us take
names.
The second thing is I think we need to change the terms of
reference. New York Times today had a big story about how we
need $3 billion more for food inspection. I am generally
sympathetic with that, but on the other hand if you look at the
honey case, I am not sure how much money would be sufficient
and I think the onus should go the other direction and that is
the Chinese would basically guarantee that their food is safe.
The other thing is a question of draconian punishments.
Congress has a history of imposing draconian punishments, the
Toshiba case being the most famous example. And also this
committee has jurisdiction over the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act.
Third, I have included something called the strategic
policy framework which was circulated in the last Congress and
is essentially a way to organized looking at Chinese issues
from a comprehensive standpoint. So if you put the three
together, take names, that is number one. Number two is change
the terms of reference. Number three, begin to talk about
really draconian measures against some of the people who are
engaged in this and then do this all in a comprehensive way. I
think that would be the best of my suggestions. Thank you very
much for the opportunity to speak.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Triplett follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. And Ms. Lovera
STATEMENT OF MS. PATTY LOVERA, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, FOOD & WATER
WATCH
Ms. Lovera. Good afternoon. My name is Patty Lovera and I
am the assistant director of Food & Water Watch. We are a
nonprofit consumer advocacy organization and we appreciate the
opportunity to present testimony on this important topic.
As we have discussed, the United States is increasingly
reliant on imported food and China is in the position as the
world's largest agricultural economy to send us a lot of the
food that we are importing. We import over 1 billion pounds of
fruits and vegetables from China every year and over 1 billion
pounds of fish and seafood. For some products, like apple juice
and garlic, China has already started to replace domestic
production of crops that we have traditionally grown here. And
it is not just fresh produce or even fruits and vegetables and
seafood. We are increasingly bringing in processed foods and
the ingredients that we use in processed foods.
In 2010, we imported 81 million pounds of spices and 41
million pounds of pasta and baked goods from China.
I have included some charts with a lot more data on these
trends in the written testimony that I have submitted.
Food safety problems in China have obviously been making
headlines for a while. We spoke already about contamination of
foods with melamine. The one point I will add to the melamine
story is why melamine was in the food. So melamine is an
ingredient in plastics and it has been intentionally added to
these food products to try to artificially increase the
nitrogen contents in those foods, to attempt to beat laboratory
tests for protein levels. So this was not an accidental
contamination. This was intentional adulterated with an
economic motive, to try to beat laboratory tests.
So despite very public efforts in recent years by the
Chinese Government to crack down on food safety problems, it is
kind of a continual feed of bad news from the food safety front
from China. We have heard a lot of these examples already.
I do want to spend a minute talking about what our
Government is doing in terms of protecting U.S. consumers with
our oversight of these imports. We have already heard that the
FDA can inspect less than 2 percent of imported produce,
processed food, and seafood which we think almost guarantees
that some unsafe Chinese products are going to make their way
on to our store shelves.
The FDA opened its first office in China in 2008. However,
the few FDA inspectors in China are overwhelmed by the sheer
size of the nation's food production including an estimated 1
million food processing companies. In Fiscal Year 2012, FDA
conducted ten inspections of food facilities in China.
When it comes to meat and poultry imports, that is the
responsibility of the Department of Agriculture. And we are not
yet importing meat and poultry for human consumption from
China, but that process is underway and we are concerned about
the way that USDA is regulating imports of these products from
other countries and what that will mean if China does get
approved. The USDA recently announced in 2009 that it made a
major change to its oversight of imports by ending annual in-
depth audit visits it would make to exporting countries. Now
they are relying on a self-reporting tool for countries as a
substitute. And that means they are going to do those audit
visits every 3 years instead of annually. So if we reach a
point and the process is ongoing now where China gets approved
as equivalent to send processed chicken products here, we worry
that that is the process the USDA will use and it is clearly
not sufficient.
Just a few recommendations that we would have about what we
can be doing on the U.S. front to protect consumers from this
situation? We think in the big picture it is really important
to think about that this is not an unforeseeable outcome. This
is not an accident. We are combining trade policy that makes
the U.S. more and more reliant on importing food with a food
safety regulatory system that is not up to the job of dealing
with that rising tide of imports. So in addition to examining
our trade policy, we think we also need to really take a hard
look at the changes we need to make to our food safety
programs.
So specifically, we think the USDA should conduct an
entirely new investigation before allowing Chinese poultry
products to be exported to the United States. If these imports
are approved, USDA should permanently assign inspection
personnel to China so that the exporting plants receive regular
visits by USDA inspectors.
When it comes to the FDA, they need the resources to
conduct more inspections in food facilities in China rather
than relying on third party certifications of the safety
practices used by exporting firms. So this is a model that is
being proposed under new food safety legislation that would
make the FDA very reliant on using third parties to verify that
food from other countries is safe. We don't think that is
adequate for U.S. consumers. It is the government's job to do
these safety inspections. So we are quite concerned about that.
And then finally, consumers do have one tool right now to
protect themselves which is country of origin labeling which is
mandatory, thanks to Federal law. It covers meat, seafood,
fruits and vegetables and some nuts, but there are problems in
the coverage of that labeling program because of the way that
USDA has defined the word processed. The law says processed
foods don't get a label. USDA wrote an incredibly broad
definition of processed, so a lot of forms of these foods that
should be covered are not required to have a label. So we think
that USDA should change that definition so consumers get more
coverage of the country of origin label. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lovera follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. Ms. Richardson.
STATEMENT OF MS. SOPHIE RICHARDSON, CHINA DIRECTOR, HUMAN
RIGHTS WATCH
Ms. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to the
members of the subcommittee for holding this timely----
Mr. Rohrabacher. We are going to need you a little closer
to the mic or whatever we can do there.
Ms. Richardson. How is that?
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is great.
Ms. Richardson. In Human Rights Watch's view, the integrity
of products made in China, whether they are for domestic
consumption or for export is directly related to the
government's respect for the freedom of expression, access to
information, and the independence of the legal system. In other
words, the lack of protections, the lack of upholding these
particular rights make it extremely difficult to ensure whether
products are safe, whether products are what they say they are,
or whether consumers here or there have any means of real
effective redress.
In one particularly telling example of the Chinese
Government's choice to suppress information as Mr. Keating
referred to in his opening remarks, Chinese journalists were
ready in the early summer of 2008 to report the melamine
scandal but because of the ban on bad news in the run up to the
2008 Olympics, those journalists were not allowed to report
that story until much later in the year by which point 300,000
kids had gotten sick and at least 6 had died. So the government
was perfectly willing to suppress news even that which posed a
clear public safety threat.
It is also worth noting that in November 2010 a Beijing
court sentenced a man named Zhao Lianhai to 2\1/2\ years in
prison on charges of causing a public disturbance which we
found particularly ironic description of the actions of man who
in the face of his own child's melamine-induced illness had
sought to organize other parents to file a class action
lawsuit. Even now 5 years later, it is not hard to find
newspaper articles about Chinese consumers either going abroad
specifically for the purpose of or incidental to outside travel
purchasing baby milk formula because concerns about those
products still run so deep.
To us, it is of equal concern the range of issues on which
the Chinese domestic press and the international press continue
to be prevented from reporting in a timely manner, whether it
is about chemical spills, infectious disease outbreaks or
public unrest in response to environmental problems. This puts
all of us at risk.
I think the problems aren't just a question of what does or
doesn't make it into a newspaper or what products make it into
an export stream, but also about what kinds of information
ordinary people inside China can have access to. I have also
submitted into the record a report we wrote in 2011 about the
lead poisoning of children in four provinces in China. These
were children of people who either worked in battery factories
or lived near facilities that processed products made with
lead. None of those facilities operated in compliance with
domestic laws on health and safety obligations. Many of them
were operating in violation of close-down orders. Several of
them had been fined, but paid the fines and continued to
operate. And we think this was largely a result of commingling
of economic and political interests in those areas. It is a
common dynamic across the country.
Parents of sick children were repeatedly thwarted, not only
in their efforts to get accurate tests. Parents told us
repeatedly about being given falsified test results. Parents
who went to the provincial capital to file complaints or try to
file lawsuits were turned back. Some of them, in fact, were
arrested, essentially in pursuit of simply trying to get
accurate diagnoses and some sort of compensation or assistance
for their gravely-ill children.
I think it is the case that while there are more
regulations than rhetoric now particularly coming out of the
new leadership about pollution and about public health, it is
very hard to see how those have become actionable tools for
people to get educated, get help, or hold officials or
companies to account.
On the question of what remains to be done, clearly, and
many people at this table are much better equipped to talk
about the regulatory regimes and what fixes there need to be
taken than I am, but this is obviously I think consistent with,
for example, ICE's problems and even accessing the facilities
to check for prison-made goods. There is a long history of the
challenges of inspections inside the country.
But I think it is also not just a question of regulation of
inspection regimes. There are issues about information, freedom
of express, at stake. And I think it is not just up to the
State Department or specific cabinet members to raise those
issues. I think it is very clear that for the FDA, for their
agencies to talk about access to information and freedom of
expression in China is more meaningful than it ever has been in
the past.
I also think there is a lot of room for U.S. officials from
a variety of agencies to take these issues up with counterparts
other than the Foreign Ministry or the Ministry of Health, such
as the Supreme Court or the Public Security Bureau. Thank you
very much.
[Ms. Richardson did not submit a prepared statement.]
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. Thank all of you for
beginning this discussion. It is the chair's intention to let
Mr. Keating, the ranking member, go first in the questions and
then Mr. Stockman from Texas, and then I will--I think they
call it in baseball, I will clean up.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had a thought
listening to you, Ms. Richardson, that in the absence of the
media being able to disclose things, what effect, if any, has
the social media been able to do to get the word out to Chinese
people that there are dangers in their food and specifically
when these instances occur, and there is illness attached, to
alert people in that respect? Has it been helpful in that way?
Ms. Richardson. Certainly it is an incredibly powerful tool
for alerting people to specifically which kinds of products or
which companies' products are problematic. At the same time,
first of all, social media is subject to the same kinds of
censorship the official print media is or electronic media. And
so sometimes that information is quashed fairly quickly.
I don't have a lot of specific research to point to this,
but it is also become more common in the last 4 or 5 years for
journalists and even sort of citizen journalists to be charged
with spreading rumors. There is actually a specified--it is
considered an administrative violation rather than a criminal
one, but I think it makes some people nervous about sharing
information that could be construed as reporting a rumor rather
than a fact.
Mr. Keating. Mr. Triplett, you mentioned the effects of
this on America's business community here at home. Could you
comment, and any of our panelists, on how it affects America's
interests from a business perspective abroad with us trying to
do business abroad?
Mr. Triplett. Yes, sir. Of course, we know that the Chinese
are the biggest counterfeiters in the world. And so it is one
thing to counterfeit something and make it work right and so
forth and so on, but if you make something that is, in fact,
poisonous, then obviously you damage the brand of the American
firm as well. I think that is a whole wider issue that you can
get into. That gets into things besides consumables as well.
There have been rumors for years about the Chinese having UL
labels that were faked. And so somebody thinks abroad, let us
say you see something that is made in the United States, has a
UL label on it and if it is possibly faked by the Chinese, then
obviously you lose business all the way around.
It is part of the whole larger thing which is one of the
reasons why I am suggesting that the committee return to the
idea of a comprehensive approach to the various kinds of
Chinese problems. You all had hearings on Chinese cyber
terrorism, correct? So that is an issue. Food safety is an
issue. Arms smuggling, I would argue, is an issue, and so forth
and so on. And to the extent that the Congress can look at this
comprehensively, I think that is probably a good idea. Thank
you.
Mr. Keating. To any of our panelists, Chinese officials
have been making some attempts to increase regulation and
enforcement targeting polluting factories. Have these attempts
been making a difference at all in addressing the urgent and
long-term health consequences associated with the levels of
lead seen in villages like Henan, and Hunan, Shaanxi, and
Yunnan. Those kind of villages, there are reports that there is
lead polluting those villages. Are any of you aware of the
efforts they are making on trying to regulate this kind of
pollution, if they are effective at all?
Ms. Lovera. I am not familiar specifically with lead
programs, but I mean when we look at food safety stories and we
are trying to track what is coming out of China, it does appear
that there is kind of a broad attempt to really put on a very
public effort to crack down on problems. There is something
often in the news about the crackdown. Last week it was fake
meat. It is pretty constant. I mean one of the issues when you
are talking about something that is as pervasive as entire
villages being contaminated, the question is then where are you
going to grow the food? The lead is not just going to go away
because they deal with the polluting factor. It is in the soil.
Why I can speak to the best is that we don't have a
regulatory system here to know what province or let alone
village a product would come from if it was shipped here and we
don't really have a system that is going to very often do a lab
test to look for lead levels. We tend to find that kind of
thing when there is a problem and work backwards and then find
a source. We are not intercepting things when they are coming
into the U.S.
Mr. Keating. I have a question. Go ahead.
Ms. Richardson. I would just add to that a couple of
points. Shortly after we released this report about lead
poisoning, there was an announcement by the Ministry of
Environment that about 500 battery-producing factories were
going to be shut down. We have tried to track that over the
years to see if they actually were shut down, if they stayed
shut down, if, in fact, they reopened, whether the necessary
protective practices had been put in place and it is extremely
difficult to discern whether that has actually happened.
Look, we see this on lots of different issues of a problem
reaches a certain level of publicity inside China. The
government says we are going to crack down on it. And a year
later we are having the same conversation. I did also want to
pick up on the point that Ms. Lovera just made because when we
were doing this research, we were also trying to figure out if
any of the batteries that were being produced in these
factories actually were turning up in the U.S. or were being on
sold into an export chain. It was either going from the China
end to here or going from here backwards. It was almost
impossible to figure out. We didn't have the resources to try
to track the products along the way. So for all I know,
products that got made in these very factories wound up here.
But we should be able to know that. We should be able to figure
that out more easily I think.
Mr. Keating. Thank you. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you and now Mr. Stockman.
Mr. Stockman. I have a question. If we--first of all, I
would have expected Diane Sawyer or someone from ABC, NBC, CBS,
anybody to cover this. This is a national problem. My question
for you is, if we publicize your names and make some
statements, some of the frustrations I get when I am on a
committee I will reiterate some of the things and I am not
saying you have done this, then the press calls up and they say
well, that is not exactly what we said.
I think this is very alarming what we are hearing today and
had another nation or other nations done this, I think many
people would view it almost as an act of war. And that is
alarming. Ms. Richardson, your statement that they allowed
their own citizens to die just so they could have a good face
on the Olympics and that they are willing to sacrifice their
own children, their own children for the purpose of national
pride. I don't think then that we fall anywhere near their own
children. So I don't see how their concerns, what I am saying
is if they don't seem to care about their own kids, why would
they care about us? They can't run their own food program, but
they are somehow going to have compassion for us? That is
simply not true.
I was wondering, which company, is Walmart one of the ones
that imports the most Chinese food for their groceries, do you
know?
Mr. Kastel. It is really across the board. The organic
industry has been the subject of corporate takeover so to speak
through mergers and acquisitions, so most of the major name
brands are controlled by familiar agribusinesses like Dean
Foods and General Mills and Kraft and Smuckers.
Mr. Stockman. Have you gone to those farms that claim to be
organic in China?
Mr. Kastel. No.
Mr. Stockman. Would they let you come there?
Mr. Kastel. No. This is a really good question. I mean they
will limit our access. As an industry watchdog, we actually had
some inspectors on the ground before the melamine problem
reared its ugly head. These people withdrew. In fact, we had
two sets of independent, nonprofit inspectors. They weren't
necessarily experts in terms of agriculture. They were normally
inspecting workplace environments, but both groups of
inspectors withdrew because they were afraid for their own
personal safety. They couldn't get near these facilities.
It is even worse. Now you are a consumer of organic food?
Mr. Stockman. Yes.
Mr. Kastel. We appreciate that. The farmers that are
members of the Cornucopia Institute and the farmers that are
certified under the USDA accreditation program are visited
every year by a USDA accredited certifier. The USDA directly
supervises these certifiers, so there is this third party
oversight and then you have got nonprofit, public interest
groups watching the corporations and watching the government
officials. That doesn't happen in China. There are no U.S.
certification agencies. All the USDA certification happens by
foreign certifiers mostly from Europe. They can't even go
unencumbered and inspect these farms. They have to be
accompanied by a Chinese certification entity. The farmland is
actually owned by the state, not by the individual farmers. It
is a whole different animal over there.
The individual farms are not even being certified as our
farms here are as a separate farming operation where their
procedures are very intimately reviewed and scrutinized.
Instead, because of the cumbersome mechanism, it is so
expensive to certify farms over there, like a couple thousand
dollars that most of these very small agricultural producers
are certified under a group or an umbrella certification
through the exporters. So it is a bastardization of the entire
system that organic consumers in this country are willing to
pay a premium for.
I think you used the term Orwellian? Was that you,
Representative?
Mr. Stockman. Yes.
Mr. Kastel. This is Orwellian that families are seeking a
safer and more nutritious food supply that they trust and it is
coming from this low level of oversight. And you asked about
the competition that we face. Our farmers, our entrepreneurs,
our processors, our high-integrity businesses are facing this
unfair, uneven playing field because we go through--we jump
through these hoops. It is expensive. We have to document
everything we are doing on farms and processing plants. That is
not happening in China.
Mr. Stockman. I want to say one thing. I actually toured a
catfish farm in China and I had the PLA there very close to me.
It was owned by--people don't realize it, but the military
actually owns a lot of the industries over there. And it was
alarming to me to the degree which they controlled it and we
were given limited access. I can just say though I am puzzled,
why do you think you are not--well two questions, excuse me,
Mr. Chairman, if I go over a little bit. But should we block
all imports of food until we get access? And two, why do you
think that the national media is not picking up on this? It is
alarming that they are not.
Mr. Kastel. Sure. First of all, I think as a food consumer,
as I think we all are, I would like to see Congress demand of
our regulators that imported foods meet the same high
standards, the same level of inspections. Just because it is
coming in on a container, why should there be less oversight?
If we can afford to do it, they can afford to do it in other
countries, either through a creditable inspection service with
which we recognize reciprocity which doesn't exist in China or
by our own inspectors. But short of that, do you want to
entrust your children, your grandchildren's health and future
and well being to some economic interest?
Again, this has been referenced more than just by my
testimony. We have endemic levels of commercial fraud in that
country, superseding just the food industry. Why should we
trust somebody who has robbed us 20 times that they are going
to operate in an ethical manner going forward? Trust and
verify.
Mr. Stockman. Thank you.
Ms. Lovera. Just on the topic, I mean one issue that we
deal with as a consumer advocacy group is a little bit of
almost fatigue on food safety news and I think that is part of
what is happening. But to your question about whether to let
these products in or not, we are now very dependent on certain
things. One country, like China, is producing 80 percent of the
world's Vitamin C and you shut them down, products won't get
made, right? So that is one factor in this as a reluctance to
not have some of the products made.
I mean one very specific example we are dealing with right
now is the FDA has been tracking for several years reports of
illness in mostly dogs, and it seems to be tied to a specific
type of treats made of chicken. They are like chicken jerky
treats. And they are sourced from China. They can't quite
figure out the problem and this has been going on for years. It
will get occasional local media, people will cover it as a
local story, this tragic thing happened to a local pet owner,
but it hasn't really risen to this thing that has been going on
for several years. There is a China connection and at several
points last year when FDA went to plants that were making some
of these ingredients, they were not allowed to take samples.
They could take samples, but they couldn't send the samples to
labs in the U.S. to do the testing, so it was a real breakdown
in our regulators' ability to figure out what is going on.
So that gets covered almost as a local story, a very
personal story, but there is a much bigger story there about
our system not being able to deal with this and we are
dependent on the companies doing a voluntary recall. We haven't
seen FDA block this product.
Mr. Stockman. Yes, I remember when the national media got
upset with the dog food thing. I was surprised that all the dog
food was made in China at one place, even though you paid $10
for this bag, $2 for this bag came from the same shop.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my overtime use.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If we have more time and if you want more
time for a second round, we can. We are expecting to have a
vote very shortly.
Let me just ask you some, as I say clean up, batting clean
up here. You mentioned Vitamin C, 80 percent of the world's
Vitamin C comes from China?
Ms. Lovera. Yes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Is there any question that some Vitamin C
may not be up to standard?
Ms. Lovera. That is an assumption on our part. I can't
prove that to you, but I am assuming that there is some
problems based on the track record we have seen in other
sectors.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Do we know if--here it is, my multi-
vitamin for every time I have a meal and the Vitamin C is in
there. Do I know where that Vitamin C is coming from?
Ms. Lovera. No, we don't get this level of information as
consumers.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So American consumer, if some of us are
concerned with the standards in China, we don't know that we
are consuming something from China even--and that's not on
anywhere near on the label, right?
Ms. Lovera. It may tell you what country it is made in as a
processed food, but it's not going to go down every ingredient.
Mr. Kastel. Can I add, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Go right ahead.
Mr. Kastel. Besides for those supplements that you are
shaking, that Vitamin C ascorbic acid is a very, very common
food ingredient in processed food, so if you read the fine
print where those little novels are on the side of a food
package, that is in there. So there was some----
Mr. Rohrabacher. And it doesn't say where it is coming
from?
Mr. Kastel. No, it doesn't.
Mr. Rohrabacher. It just says Vitamin C is in there, fine,
but I personally go out of my way to try to not buy products in
China because I have concluded, that is one of the reasons we
are holding this hearing is because the chairman has concluded
that there are some major questions that need to be answered
and some challenges that need to be met before we can trust our
putting things into our body or into our family's body that
might be harmful.
Mr. Kastel. Industry has fought like hell against country
of origin labeling, COO. We would really encourage this body
and all Members of Congress to defend the rights of the
American public to make informed choices in the marketplace.
Not only do I not want to buy Chinese food in my household, I
want to reward the businesses in the United States that employ
people at fair wages, that meet pollution and other regulatory
standards, that meet other labor standards. And I can't do that
in most of the food I buy because the processed food, as Patty
was stating, is not required to label.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I actually shop a lot for my family. I
like to shop. And I know I am going to shock everybody here,
but I really like to go to the 99 cent store, okay? So I go to
the 99 cent store and you have all of these labels that are
sounding so American, I mean Honey Hill and Aunt Martha's this
and all of these things that sound just sound so down home
American and then you look real close and the little tiny print
it says China on it.
Mr. Kastel. It is even worse than that, you have brands
like Chicago Pneumatic that makes tools. They are from China.
Maybe there is a town called Chicago in one of the provinces
there, but I don't think so.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Or as the one that used to be, they
changed the name of a city in China to USA so they can print on
it made in USA. Hm. Well, we are up against what I consider to
be a very, how do we say, an adversary that is seeking benefit
in a way that will put our children and our families at risk
and we need to make sure that--and there are people in our
country, of course, who are making a profit by dealing with
those who are putting us at risk. And I think that we need to
make sure that number one, labeling means something.
I will give you one example. In my area, there is a
gentleman who runs a paint and coating company and he used to
sell all the paint for Mattel dolls. Now I happen to have two
daughters who are 9 years old and I know what little kids do
with dolls. They kiss little dolls and when the Chinese bought
Mattel or bought the rights or Mattel decided to contract with
the Chinese, the Chinese came to this company and he described
how he had to make sure he had the right kind of paint that
would not be at all risky to the health of the consumer. And
sure enough, they decided to go forward with their own formula
and Mattel dolls after about a year were found to have lead
paint. And so you have all these little children kissing their
doll, thinking and with Americans having trusted Mattel, a very
trusted label and not to do something like that, but those
children were being put at risk because Mattel had decided to
manufacture in China.
By the way, that situation was cleared up, only because it
took a huge fight and it took a great amount of spotlighting
the issue for that to happen. I think this has been a very good
hearing. Do either of you have another question you would like
to throw up?
I think we could have a second round.
Mr. Stockman. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say something
quick. I think we on this panel probably have both
conservatives and liberals and are in general agreement. And I
think that is an unusual circumstance where we have this
concern from both sides of the aisle and both different
philosophies. I just again can't stress enough, I think somehow
your organizations need to announce that this hearing occurred,
and the things that you said and with us also stating that
maybe we will generate some interest. This is a very serious
issue. And it is alarming that everything that we read now on
the labels, in fact, may not be true. And that is what we rely
on, those labels. So again, thank you for the hearing, Mr.
Chairman
Mr. Rohrabacher. I will end it with this, obviously from
what we have heard today, the American people are facing a
threat, a major threat to their well being. Their health, the
health of their families could be in great jeopardy and this
could be--and they could be put in jeopardy. They may be put in
jeopardy by number one, unscrupulous people who are making
money dealing with people in China who are not doing anything
up to the standard that we expect here in the United States of
America.
Mr. Kastel. And if I can interrupt to add one more thing,
Mr. Chairman? Taking off from what you are saying because you
are spot on.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Go right ahead.
Mr. Kastel. I think we need to hold the businesses in this
country that are doing the importing responsible as well
because they are again part of this dynamic that places really
responsible food producers in the United States at a
competitive disadvantage. I use one example, Eden Foods in
Clinton, Michigan.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Say that again?
Mr. Kastel. Eden Foods in Clinton, Michigan, you asked
about Walmart organics, the canned beans at Walmart whether
they are pinto beans or black beans, they come from China. Eden
Foods buys not from some broker with a piece of paper, but from
farmers that they have dealt with for generations in North
America, mostly in Michigan, but some in the Plains States and
Canada. They know the farmers. They are a little bit more
expensive, but they are operating in a very high, ethical
level. We need to protect those kind of investors and
entrepreneurs and that means that we need to hold responsible
for everybody in the supply chain.
If somebody comes in from China at 30 percent cheaper, we
need to find out why and those businesses need to do their due
diligence. And if they can't inspect, if they are not allowed
to go to that factory or those farms, they shouldn't be doing
business there.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, step one seems to be for us all to
agree, Republican and Democrat, that we believe the consumer
has a right to know what they are buying and has a right to
know what country of origin they are coming from because
consumers may or may not want to deal with--even if it was not
healthy, maybe they want to deal with slave labor for countries
that don't permit unions or don't permit their workers to earn
a decent living. And maybe there are people who are
nationalistic and just want to buy from the United States of
America, from fellow Americans. That's fine, too. Maybe they
are willing to buy a little bit more or pay a little bit more.
So we can all agree that we, as Americans, have a right to
make the decisions in our lives based on a free flow of
information and accurate information and that right now that is
not happening. And in fact, the fact that we have got
threatening foods coming in that could do harm to our families
suggest to us that the American people are being betrayed by a
compromise of standards and someone is making a lot of money at
it. I certainly believe that we should be holding the corporate
interests, the individuals and the corporations that are
pushing for this and bringing food over that may or may not be
safe.
And by the way, they are the same ones, when we start
talking about labeling, you can bet that these are the folks
who have been fighting it behind the scenes the whole time. It
is like and I always complain about the companies that go over
to China and then the corporate leaders say well, it is not our
job to watch out for the security of the United States. That is
your job. You pass the laws and we will have to obey them.
Until then, we want to invest wherever we want for the benefit
of our company, except they don't add that their company then
spends a lot of money on lobbying to make sure that we don't
pass any laws that prevent them from doing business with a
dictatorship that is the world's worst human rights abuser in
the world.
So we have got our work cut out for us. This is a very good
start in the discussion and I do plan to hold another hearing
on this some time in the near future.
Mr. Stockman. Mr. Chairman. I have a request, if possible,
could we bring the officials from the Silk Company before the
committee?
Mr. Rohrabacher. We can ask anybody to come here that we
would like.
Mr. Stockman. I would like to put Mark and them on the same
panel.
Mr. Triplett. Mr. Chairman, one last thing to pick up on
the distinguished gentleman's point. We have the names of
products and we know people are making a lot of profits. That
is exactly what you said. But we don't have the names of who
those people are. If, God forbid, we should have a disaster
here, stopping all trade is all we have. We don't know who the
corrupt officials are. We don't know yet who the people are who
are engaged in this. And to the extent that we can gain some
information from the administration, task the administration to
find the names, that is useful.
I think the Congress did a very good job of naming some
Russian officials, you remember, very recently. This is
legislation you all did. And it caused a big impact in Russia.
You can cause a really big impact in China if you named names
or threatened to do so. And that would mean oh gee, I can't go
to the United States. I can't visit my money and I can't send
my kid to college, all of this kind of thing in the United
States. If you begin with the basic data of who the
perpetrators are, I think that would be a very useful thing for
the committee to do, based on the Russian experience. Thank
you.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, transparency and accountability are
two essential ingredients if we are going to have freedom and
be able to have decent lives and have any security in our lives
at all with freedom. Freedom means that you are going to have
some choices. Freedom means there is going to be people doing
things that you are not totally in control of, but you should
be in control of your own decisions. So with that said, I want
to thank the panelists for opening up this area of discussion.
As I say, I think we will probably have another round of
hearings on this some time in the months ahead, but I think we
have started the national dialogue which is important. This
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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Material Submitted for the Hearing RecordNotice deg.
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Material submitted for the record by Ms. Sophie Richardson, China
director, Human Rights Watch
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[Note: The above report is not reprinted here in its entirety but is
available in committee records or may be accessed on the Internet at:
http://www.hrw.org/sites/
default/files/reports/china0611WebInside_0_0.pdf (accessed 6/5/13).]
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[Note: The above report is not reprinted here in its entirety but is
available in committee records or may be accessed on the Internet at:
http://www.hrw.org/sites/
default/files/reports/china0111webwcover.pdf (accessed 6/5/13).]
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