On a warm Friday afternoon in June, about 50,000 boxes of toothpaste got their last squeeze inside an industrial trash compactor in Homestead, Fla. They were yanked from the shelves of discount stores and bathroom cabinets after a nationwide recall warned that the toothpaste contained a chemical, diethylene glycol, that could lead to kidney failure. Francisco Botta, who distributed the toothpaste for his family’s wholesale business in Miami, stocked his warehouse bathroom with the stuff. “I used it every day,” he says. “I told everybody to stop.” Like so many other things that Americans buy these days without thinking, those tubes of Dr. Cool, Superdent and Everfresh Smile2 began their life in a factory in China –in this case, in Wuxi, a city of 4.5 million about 80 miles west of Shanghai. They were sold by Goldcredit International Enterprises, which is based in a gated community called Lakebank Elegant Garden, within sight of China’s Taihu Lake. It makes not just toothpaste but also pencil sharpeners and balloons, hand sanitizer and toothbrushes. “What we exported is in line with the Chinese-government standards,” Goldcredit business manager Shi Jun says about the toothpaste. Adds manager Hu Keyu: “The Chinese government already issued a statement. What more do you want from us?” Would a nontoxic dentifrice be asking too much? On the 8,000-mile journey between Wuxi and Homestead, Goldcredit’s products move, in effect, through time. When a product made in China enters the U.S., it arrives with a kind of unfettered capitalism that hasn’t existed in America for a century–uninhibited by regulation, lawsuits or, until recently, public outrage. It’s difficult even for a businessman who tries to follow the rules. “You go to China, you check the place out, check the quality of the products,” Botta says. But after the recall–of a product labeled safe in China–he is wary. He saw a big candy factory while he was in Wuxi. “I wouldn’t buy that,” he says. But he’ll continue importing school supplies and shower curtains. It’s the same calculation that millions of American consumers are making since the recent recalls of deadly pet food, lead-paint-tainted toy trains and shredding tires made in China. The U.S. imported 40% of its consumer goods from China last year. But there is no practical way to gauge, other than by reputation, whether a Chinese import is as safe as it is cheap. So should you worry more about the extension cords or the TV? Screen the kids’ toys but not their shoes? Until China’s capitalism develops its own set of rules and limits, is that our only option in a made-in-China world? Every time a federal agency recalls a Chinese product–as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered June 26 with nearly 450,000 tires–consumers get jolted with concern but also relief that someone is paying attention. Yet the volume of imports from China is straining the capacity of U.S. regulators to watch them, and those goods are overwhelming China’s efforts to reform the eight disparate agencies that regulate its consumer products. More than 40% of recalls by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, including all the toys recalled this year and 79% of toys last year, involved products from China. The volume of consumer goods from China has nearly tripled since 1997, but the agency’s budget has increased just 12%, to $62 million, over the past five years. “There’s no question it’s strapped,” says Eric Rubel, a former general counsel to the commission. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is also struggling to keep up. Shipments of FDA-regulated goods from China have jumped fourfold over the past decade, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the FDA has only 1,317 field investigators for 320 ports of entry. The agency inspects just 0.7% of all imports under its purview, half of what it did 10 years ago. We’ve dropped our guard. Sure, it would be great if the FDA could stamp every import with its seal of approval the way the Department of Agriculture does: meat, poultry and eggs can’t be imported without meeting its standards. But David Acheson, who was appointed the FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection after the recall of tainted pet food in March, says that kind of monitoring for 16 million shipments of everything from cough syrup to toothpaste would be “too complex and cumbersome.” So instead the FDA saves its fire for the high-risk goods that have caused health problems. That’s what happened in early June with Chinese-made toothpaste. Following 100 deaths in Panama linked to cough syrup containing diethylene glycol , the FDA issued an import alert on all toothpaste made in China, tested the tubes it could find for the toxin and recalled the questionable batches. “Obviously it’s not possible for us to test every product that is coming in to make sure it’s meeting every standard we have,” Acheson says. “It’s got to be based on risk.” That’s an efficient use of resources, but it makes the FDA a “tombstone” agency: nothing happens unless someone dies. “Consumers are the canary in the coal mine for this system,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “That’s not what a government program should do. It should anticipate and prevent problems.” Doing that, of course, would require improving China’s food and product safety at the source. “We’d rather have the products manufactured safely in the first place,” says acting Consumer Product Safety Commission chairman Nancy Nord. Despite our buying power, the U.S. government simply has very little leverage to impose new restrictions on Chinese goods, in part because it is lobbying China to open up its markets to U.S. goods. “This can’t be the Federal Government’s responsibility,” says Pietra Rivoli, a professor at Georgetown’s business school and author of the book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. Rivoli says U.S. companies that use Chinese factories ought to view the risk of importing a dangerous product just like any other business risk. “It’s really the responsibility of the importing companies. How many of them want to take on the reputational risk of children dying?”
