[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 130 (Wednesday, September 5, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11088-S11090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRADE AND CONSUMER SAFETY
Mr. DORGAN. If I might, in a separate part of the Record, I wish to
talk about something that showed up in the newspapers this morning as
well. I wish to tell you first--this was not in the papers this
morning--about something that was a while back. I wish to tell you
about a 4-year-old boy named Jarnell Brown. Jarnell Brown was from
Minnesota. Jarnell is now dead. Jarnell is dead because he was visiting
a friend's house, and he swallowed a small heart-shaped charm that came
on a bracelet that came with a pair of Reebok tennis shoes. It turns
out that little charm, that little jewelry charm contained 99 percent
lead, and it killed Jarnell Brown. It was 99 percent lead.
It came from China, which probably should not surprise us. It
suggests, once again, in this global economy--in which we decide we are
going to produce elsewhere and ship here, after we spent a century
developing standards to protect workers, protect consumers, the kinds
of things Americans basically expect to be protected for and from--we
decide we are going to outsource all that so we will have all these
products made elsewhere and shipped into our country.
So we get tennis shoes, and we get a charm bracelet, and we get a
heart attached to the end of the bracelet that is 99 percent lead, and
the young boy accidentally swallows that little heart and dies from
lead poisoning.
Now, let me talk a bit about this morning's news. Mattel is
announcing this morning a product recall. They are recalling 848,000
Chinese-made Barbie and Fisher-Price toys that have excessive amounts
of lead. Toys are being pulled from store shelves, including Barbie
kitchen and furniture items, Fisher-Price train toys, and Bongo Band
drums.
These are innocent enough looking products. But the surface paint on
these products contains excessive levels of lead, prohibited under our
Federal laws because of the serious threat they pose to human health,
particularly the health of young children.
I do not suggest that Mattel has any response this morning other than
being heartsick and heartbroken over this situation. Mattel is a good
company. But what has happened to Mattel has happened to many other
companies. They outsource production and then ship the product into
this country, and there is no determination of whether those products
are produced under the same conditions we would require in this
country.
We only inspect 1 percent of the products that come into this
country. So whether it is food or toys or jewelry or other things we
require certain kinds of standards with respect to its production here,
yet there are no such standards required with respect to production
elsewhere. Oh, I know the people who outsource these contracts will
say: Well, we require this and that of them. But there is no
enforcement, and everyone knows that.
Let me describe a few of the circumstances. I talk about the lead
paint. As we know, lead paint is used because it is bright, durable,
flexible, fast drying, and, above all, it is cheap. So the Chinese, we
now know from products that are being pulled from the shelves, have
used lead paint. They mass produce lead paint and coloring agents such
as lead chromate that are generally cheaper than other pigments, so we
are now seeing the effect of that on store shelves.
This poor 4-year-old boy felt the effect in the most extreme way. He
died.
It is not just China, and it is not just toys. FDA inspectors
recently intercepted shipments of black pepper with salmonella from
India, intercepted crab meat from Mexico too filthy to eat, and produce
from the Dominican Republic was stopped 813 times last year for
containing traces of illegal pesticides--this is a country with whom we
just signed a trade agreement.
Now let me describe--even as we have galloped globally to outsource
production but not to develop and maintain the protections for the
American consumers on the products coming in--the Food and Drug
Administration. Under the Bush administration, the FDA's safety mission
I think has been substantially reduced. In fact, the FDA is planning to
close 7 of its 13 drug safety labs, and it would close or consolidate a
number of its 20 regional offices.
The trend has been to inspect fewer, not more, imports into this
country under the administration. The FDA tests, we are told, about 1
percent of imported food. Last year, the FDA took 50 percent fewer
samples for testing from imported seafood than it did in the year
previous.
The issue is not just China, but China has been in the news more than
any other country. Let me describe the circumstance of China because
that has become the most notorious offshore platform. Toys, dolls,
games, for all of these products China ranks as our No. 1 source of
imports; fish, seafood, China is No. 1. Tires, China is No. 1; also for
pet food, and toothpaste; and the list goes on. In fact, we have such a
giant trade deficit with China--this chart shows what is happening with
our trade relationship with China, which I think demonstrates an
incompetence that is almost breathtaking for this country, an
incompetence with respect to the negotiating of trade agreements and an
incompetence with respect to enforcing trade agreements. But aside from
that, I describe a circumstance here, and we are seeing it now every
day in the newspapers, of the danger to U.S. consumers.
Well, pet food--how many Americans had their pets die as a result of
contaminated pet food coming into this country? It was discovered that
animal food, pet food from China contained substances that are
dangerous to pets. Sixty million packages of pet food under 150 brands
were recalled after it was found that ingredients in pet food could be
dangerous to pets.
Seafood--the U.S. FDA banned the import of five types of farm-raised
fish and shrimp from China after they were found to contain unsafe
drugs, some of which cause cancer.
Now, I am telling you what they have found and banned, and I am
telling you they have only inspected 1 percent.
Toothpaste, Chinese-made toothpaste sold in dollar stores--the FDA
has warned consumers to throw out any toothpaste made in China. In
fact, they not only found some of the toothpaste was contaminated with
a dangerous ingredient, they found other toothpaste
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that was contaminated with the ingredient and did not list the
ingredient on the toothpaste box.
Toys and jewelry--I mentioned Mattel. There are others. Mattel has
had three very substantial recalls of Chinese-made toys in the last 5
months. Again, my guess is the executives of that company are heartsick
about what is happening. But it is a result of exporting manufacturing
and not having the protections with respect to the conditions under
which that product is manufactured--the protections for American
consumers that we have always come to expect.
I did not mention with respect to toys, the RC2 Corporation recalled
1.5 million of these little toys, Thomas & Friends from its Wooden
Railway product line, made by Hansheng Wood Products Factory in China
using lead paint.
According to a spot check recently, it was announced 20 percent of
Chinese-made jewelry contains potentially poisonous chemicals,
including lead.
Automobile tires--a tire importer called Foreign Tire Sales recalled
255,000 Chinese-made tires in August because they lacked a safety
feature that prevents tread separation.
I do not need to go through much more but only to say this: These are
real serious issues. I started by talking about a young 4-year-old boy
named Jarnell Brown. He died. There are real consequences to these
issues. We spent a century developing standards in this country to
protect workers, to protect consumers, and we built something very
special and very important in this country.
Now, under a galloping global economy, in which the rules have not
kept pace, we are told: Well--do you know what?--we are going to
outsource manufacturing because we can pay people 30 cents an hour in
sweatshops somewhere around the world, and we can have it manufactured
for less money.
Well, if that cheap product is unsafe for your health, if that
product--whether it is food or vegetables or toys or jewelry--if that
product is harmful to your health, we need to rethink the standards by
which we engage in this global economy. Yes, it is a global economy,
and I do not suggest we are going to retreat from the global economy. I
do suggest this: We should participate in the global economy on our
terms. We should describe what kind of participation we will have with
respect to this economy in a way that is fair to our workers, that
earns a decent wage in this country, and in a way that protects our
consumers for whom we have established certain consumer protections.
I know someone will say that is regulation. Yes, it is regulation. I
spoke on the floor of the Senate one day, when I held up a package of
beef. I asked consent to do that. You have to have consent to hold up a
package of beef on the floor of the Senate because it is an object to
show. I said: I do not think anybody can tell me where this beef came
from. I know they could not because it is not labeled.
So then I read the description of what the investigator found, the
inspector found when he went to a plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, and
inspected a plant that was processing beef, slaughtering cattle,
processing beef and shipping it to the United States. He found
carcasses hanging under a hot roof, with flies and feces all over the
carcasses. He described horrendous things that I read on the floor of
the Senate and led me to ask: Does anybody want to buy beef from that
circumstance?
Well, guess what. It was the only time that plant had ever been
inspected--the only time. As a result, the plant lost its license. It
then was sold, then changed its name, and was relicensed. It is now
selling beef to the United States and has never again been inspected.
I use that only to say it is exactly the same coin--the flip side of
the same coin, of lead paint coming in a heart-shaped toy from China
that a young child swallows and, as a result, dies.
I have introduced legislation dealing with the other side of this as
well with respect to workers' rights, dealing with sweatshop labor and
conditions under which people are working in sweatshops in other parts
of the world; working in sweatshops and, in some cases, producing these
kinds of products. Why? Because it is cheap. Cheap labor, cheap
products. Use lead; it is cheap. The problem is it is harmful to your
health and especially harmful to children. The legislation I have
introduced dealing with the issue of sweatshops and being fair to
American workers would ban the product of sweatshop labor coming into
this country. That bill, which is S. 367, has 12 bipartisan cosponsors.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Clinton today
as a cosponsor to that piece of legislation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if we look at these issues in the context
not of trying to destroy the advantages of a global economy but in the
context of trying to make certain the protections we have developed for
our country--protections that have allowed us to create a wonderful
place in which to work and consume--if we can, with respect to our
participation in the global economy, raise standards rather than lower
ours--if we can do that, then we will have done something significant.
But that is not what has been happening. What has been happening in
this country is a race to the bottom, and a rush to embrace the refrain
by some who want to produce where it is cheap and sell here and run
their income through the Cayman Islands to avoid paying taxes, and they
say, You know, we don't want any more regulations. I understand that.
They want to avoid regulations. They want to avoid paying a decent
wage. They want to go to offshore manufacturing platforms some place
and produce little bracelets with little hearts that are made with 99
percent lead to ship into this country. That doesn't work. It won't
work anymore. Somehow, as a country, we have to find a way to stop it.
My colleague Senator Durbin has a piece of legislation on the safety
of food imports, which I am working on with him. I have also described
the sweatshop labor bill I have introduced, and it is a bipartisan
bill, and my hope is we can move and begin to address these issues.
I know there are others who are going to want to speak in morning
business, and as soon as they come I will discontinue mine, but I do
want to make a couple of other points about this country's economy.
When one looks at the last century or so, we created a place that is
pretty unusual on this Earth and we did that because we cared about
American workers, and we created a manufacturing base that was the
strongest in the world. You cannot long remain a world economic power
without a first-rate manufacturing base, and we are now seeing that
some don't care about a manufacturing base. Let's outsource to wherever
we can find the cheapest labor. Let's outsource to not only where we
can find the cheapest labor, but also where we can combine that with
the lack of regulations. We can allow that to exist in circumstances
where those who produce and pump chemicals into the air, chemicals into
the water. Well, the problem with that is you are not only confronted
with what is called ``the China price,'' the China price with respect
to goods--you have to compete with the China price--you also now
understand the term ``the China haze,'' because we are breathing
pollutants that come from China. We all live in the same fishbowl.
Things we long ago abandoned in this country because we understand it
causes cancer, causes terrible danger to human health, we are now
breathing again in this country because of a phenomenon called the
China haze.
I know I have described China at some length today. It is not only
China we need to be concerned about with respect to what are fair rules
and fair requirements with respect to our participation in the global
economy. But I don't think we should any longer ignore the consequences
about what we read in the paper this morning: the recall of hundreds of
thousands of additional toys that are shipped into this country to be
sold on store shelves and to be played with by American children when,
in fact, they contain amounts of lead that are harmful or dangerous to
our children. We can't ignore that.
I congratulate the companies that are recalling those products, but
we shouldn't have had a reason to recall them in the first place. They
should have been produced under conditions that we would have known in
this country to be safe, that represent the
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standards we long ago have required in this country. That has not been
the case, and I think that because it is not the case, it raises a
great many questions. I also, as I indicated earlier, believe at the
very time we are seeing all of these products coming into this country
that can cause serious problems for human health, at the very time we
see that, to see this administration decide to retract on those issues
and begin to actually inspect fewer rather than more products, at a
time when we are inspecting only 1 percent of all of that which comes
in, I think that is a serious step in exactly the wrong direction.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and make a point of order that a
quorum is not present.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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