China export nightmare: Out-of-control growth overwhelms regulatory system
China cannot control food exports because its economic growth has outpaced a decentralized regulatory system which has lost control over local producers and marketplace systems, a specialist told Congress last week.
Scott Gottlieb, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy FDA commissioner, told the Senate Commerce Committee that he recently witnessed first-hand the challenges facing China.
China has been caught exporting toothpaste with poison that has killed scores of people around the world. Other products of concern include tainted fish, pet food and defective tires.
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Gottlieb said that recent Food and Drug Administration testing of 89 samples of seafood from China from October 2006 to May 2007 found that 25 percent of the farm-raised products contained potentially unsafe residues not approved for use in the U.S.
“Many of these contaminants were the antimicrobials nitrofuran, malachite green and other potentially carcinogenic chemicals,” Gottlieb said. “None of these substances is approved for use in farm-raised seafood in the United States, and the use of nitrofurans and malachite green in aquatic creatures has also been prohibited in China.”
