More disturbing news about contaminated imports

The New York Times and the Washington Post this week unveiled yet another disturbing chapter in the ongoing saga of contaminated medicinal ingredients imported from China. 

According to the papers' investigations, the recent toothpaste contamination in the U.S. and the tainted cough syrup that killed at least 100 people in Panama are the latest in a long line of often deadly incidents involving contaminated glycerin, a common ingredient in a host of products. Countless people, mostly children, died when they ingested contaminated medicines in Argentina, Haiti, India, and elsewhere. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration tried to identify the source of such incidents abroad over the past decade, but the trail turned cold when they reached the second or third broker to handle the tainted glycerin. Unable to identify and eliminate the source, government officials watched and waited for a tide of contaminated products to wash up on our shores.

Fortunately, it doesn't appear that the contaminated glycerin made it into U.S. products. That doesn't minimize the need for a system that monitors product safety and traces products through the chain of commerce back to the source, holding officials at each point accountable for product quality. Well developed and effectively applied, that process would protect consumers from more than contaminated products at the drug store; it would also go a long way toward keeping lead-tainted children's toys and jewelry (like the recently recalled Thomas & Friends toys) off store shelves. Like the FDA officials who tried to follow the trail of contaminated glycerin, CPSC staff and jewelry manufacturers have been unable to identify the factories in China that keep pumping out lead-tainted products and to impose financial and legal consequences.   

We wonder why manufacturers and our own regulatory agencies don't insist on a system that enables them to identify and avoid these tainted troughs and deal only with factories that have a proven track record. How aware are they of the source of their products? If manufacturers can't have confidence in or control over the quality of products and ingredients being made for them, how can American consumers? 

Manufacturers do have quality assurance systems in place, but those essentially voluntary programs don't appear to be effective in an environment like China, where manufacturers seem to go in and out of business at a rapid rate, and facility managers and executives turn over frequently. Government programs are equally inadequate. Firms in some countries face almost none of the scrutiny that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives to U.S. facilities. According to the Washington Post, the FDA conducted only 200 inspections of Indian and Chinese plants versus 1,200 in U.S. facilities, even though by some estimates as many as 20 percent of finished over-the-counter drugs and 40 percent of active ingredients come from those countries. Our colleagues who work on international food and drug policies say that current trade agreements don't allow our government to block imports from a particular country solely on the grounds of a bad track record. 

We wonder how the voluntary systems, billed in the '90's as a more effective alternative to "command and control" government regulation, could allow so many links in the chain of commerce to break at once. Limits on FDA budgets contricting oversight have no doubt played a role. We'd like to see a return to more control and greater confidence that our children won't die from a spoonful of cough syrup.

Previously:

• Toothpaste trouble: what you need to know now
• Tainted animal feed: Why the government's approach isn't working