Exaggerated fears, exaggerated claims

Early this year, a rash of reports about the safety of Chinese products cropped up in a number of countries the most prominent being the “pet-food” scare in the United States and farm-raised seafood in Europe.

Subsequently, US authorities also began receiving reports about problems in China-made toothpaste, car tires and seafood. Then, immediately after the US and European alarms cropped up, our very own BFAD issued an innocuous advisory on certain Chinese food items only to withdraw it the day after when it became clear that the said issuance was actually based on a Chinese government warning on the sale of the products of a specific Chinese manufacturer which they have long closed down.

Indeed, there was no clear basis for such an advisory as seems to be the case in majority of the reports of defective or unsafe Chinese product exports. It is, in a word, a case of exaggerated fear and, as some health and safety experts have now come to realize, miscommunication and the unfinished work of standard setting between China and the rest of the world.

But these reports, no matter how innocuous or unsubstantiated they may be, should serve as a wake-up call for all concerned, especially the Chinese authorities. A lot needs to be done by China to allay the fears and concerns of its trading partners.

For if truth be told, there is a lot of angst out there about “Made in China” products, especially since the Chinese export juggernaut is inexorably taking the whole world by a storm.

In the first four months of the year, China exported a whooping US$475 billion worth of goods worldwide, 20 percent or US$95 billion of which to the American market. This is higher by at least 7 percent over the same period last year and there is reason to believe that the total figures for the first semester should be no less impressive, reinforcing the view that China has indeed become the world’s main manufacturing base, especially for consumers and what some writers have come to suggest as “grocery or household” items.

Which is why it behooves the Chinese authorities to take the matter of product safety and standard as a matter of extreme importance if not national survival.

Well, they are heeding the call and punishments have not been long in coming.

Last week, the former head of China’s food and drug agency was executed after serving time in prison for taking bribes which the authorities believed led to the manufacture of faulty medicines. Two days ago, Chinese TV showed the shutting down by the authorities of a small siopao factory on the outskirts of Shenzhen using cured cardboard as filler for its products. The manager and his workers were all hauled to jail and similar raids on other “mom and pop” operations were advised.

Early on, authorities also closed down a factory in Hebei found to have “massaged” its reports to conform with product standards. We should expect the authorities to do more of the same in the next weeks or so as the government vigorously responds to the challenges, as these reports have come to be known, which have come its way.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, noted that China has taken a responsible and proactive attitude toward these safety concerns and reiterated that the government attached great importance to the quality and safety of its exports. He noted that over the past three years 99 percent of Chinese food exports to the US have met quality standards which was even higher than the equivalent figure for US food exports to China over the same period.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) has offered similar advisories. “Our food market access system,” said Wu Jianping of the SFDA’s Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine branch, “has been so implemented to standards that supermarkets like WalMart, Carrefour and Hualian do not stock food items without a quality safe (QS) mark which was being issued by the agency since 2003.”

Wu reiterated that while there may have been some hitches in the transition from a centrally planned to a more market-oriented economy the same are being addressed without letup. China is waking up to the increasingly stringent and, might I add, capricious demands of the global economy. 

Which is all for the good, especially for countries such as the Philippines which has yet to muster the will and the resources to upgrade its safety and quality standards to international levels. Not to mention the fact that up to this day our Customs and border inspection system remains so porous we could cry.

Which is why at any given day products of dubious provenance or quality find their way to our stores and households without even a “look see” by our inspectors.

And so, as we join the universal cry for safety and quality in goods and, yes, services offered us by various manufacturers and providers, local and overseas, we are equally banging on doors to ensure that our product inspection and enforcement services wake up and be ready, willing and able to do their mandated responsibilities.

More than that, to be as proactive as can be in bringing about products and services which may be less prone to human intervention and decay as those now in the market.

And now for the exaggerated claims

We are talking here about the promise of alternative fuels and energy as the world takes on the real threat of global warming and depleted fossil- based sources.

While we are all for such initiatives, maybe even more so now as we experience the dire consequences of global warming, it is best that we take pause and examine each and every undertaking in as painstaking a manner as possible.

In a word, we should, at this early stage, set honest and verifiable standards for such restorative operation.

Take the case of ethanol from corn, for example. The latest reports show that while ethanol may indeed bring about friendlier fuels it is equally true that it cannot take the place of fossil-based fuels. Not now, maybe never.

Studies show that you have to use one gallon of fossil-based energy to bring about one gallon of ethanol. So even as you turn all of the corn production of Iowa (the biggest such US producer) into ethanol you will never be able to reduce the US dependence on imported oil.

Worse, if you insist on doing that you will have to reckon with cutbacks in corn-based feeds and food products which may have to be increasingly imported as you experiment on producing ethanol for your flexi cars and power plants.

If this is true for corn-based ethanol it is very possible that other alternative fuels from sugar or coconut or Jathropa or husk or some other materials may be in the same pot.  

Carl Pope, the executive director of the environmental group Sierra Club, summed it all up when he noted that “efficiency is the steak, renewables are the sizzles.”

Indeed, as Pope himself stated, most environmental groups have now come to realize that the easiest way to cut carbon emissions and air pollution is to focus more on efficiency, less on pollution-free generation.

I think doing a menu of initiatives, not just one or two, will do the trick. But to do that we must come to agreement on what kind of price, pressure and incentive will be put on the table to attract the best, the brightest and the “mostest” (in terms of money and resources) to invest in that kind of a future.  

So what’s been said about committees that gives them such a bad reputation? For starters, a wag calls them “a group of the unfit appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.”

‘Write something else,” said her friend. “Everyone knows your field is public governance. Must you continually write about it? Write about something else!”

For a stock-market investor, few things are as frustrating as being unable to get shares of a really hot IPO. Especially if everyone else you know was able to buy and you are the only one unable to participate in the IPO’s meteoric rise.

It has been an open secret that the national government is losing hundreds of million in taxes every year due to spurious claims against tax-credit certificates (TCCs) granted to oil companies in order to cushion the high cost of oil importations, and to protect oil companies and importers/exporters who use oil substantially in their manufacturing process.

Early this year, a rash of reports about the safety of Chinese products cropped up in a number of countries the most prominent being the “pet-food” scare in the United States and farm-raised seafood in Europe.

Science and technology are slowly moving up the political agenda in many developing countries. Politicians don’t want their countries to be left out of the global knowledge economy, and are realizing that science can contribute to virtually every field of public policy.