Injurious Imports

Poison Toys from The Middle Kingdom

By René Pfister and Michael Fröhlingsdorf

Part 2: When Pushed in Corner, Chinese Fight Back

The sensitivity of the Chinese when it comes to outside pressure is illustrated by several cases involving the United States. The Americans recently put an import ban in place on some types of fish, and US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez demanded that Beijing impose stricter controls on its exports. The communist leaders reacted promptly -- imposing an import ban on US pork and chicken, allegedly because of prohibited animal feed additives.

For now, German Consumer Protection Minister Seehofer is counting on China to take steps on its own to increase product quality levels. Until then, he hopes, controls by European authorities will ensure that toys tainted with heavy metals don't end up in shopping baskets too often. He says the inspection system has shown itself to be effective.

For example, the Lower Saxony State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety examined 1,500 imported goods for hazardous substances -- just 25 of them came from China. "The country was not the focus of our interest," a spokeswoman admits.

But even when authorities do identify a problem case, a comprehensive, long-term inspection process does not always automatically follow. Several years ago, a growing number of peanuts began showing up which were contaminated with aflatoxin, a carcinogenic substance produced by a species of fungus. Inspections were intensified for a brief time, but now only one in ten shipments from China is controlled, just as before.

Inconsistent Inspection Standards

Even when German labs do discover hazardous substances, provincialism can stand in the way of effective action. Last summer, inspectors in the city of Wolfsburg examined suspicious crawfish from China in one supermarket and found the product was contaminated with a strictly prohibited antibiotic, chloramphenicol, and not for the first time. State authorities determined that the product came from one of the supermarket chain's central warehouses in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia. They warned authorities there, but little action was taken. Local inspectors didn't feel it fell within their area of responsibility since the crawfish had been imported via the Netherlands and had also been processed there.

"We can't allow German federalism to prevent effective monitoring," says Sylvia Maurer from the Federation of German Consumer Organizations -- leaving aside the fact that regulation in the Netherlands is apparently lax as well. While the guidelines for what is allowed to enter EU are set in Brussels, inspections in Germany are carried out by the federal states. They sometimes perform the task well; sometimes they don't. It's a problem that the European Commission has already pointed out in a number of internal reports. Unfortunately, EU member states have "no harmonized approach to official inspections."

Ultimately, it is up to the diligence of local inspectors to ensure that people are protected from poisonous products from China. During one routine inspection, food inspectors in the state of Baden-Württemberg discovered the pesticide isofenphos -- illegal in Europe -- in Spanish bell peppers. In the course of their investigation, they discovered the poison had likely been shipped from China to Europe in mineral water bottles. It was then used to combat an insect infestation in the Andalusian vegetable growing region of Almeria -- on the cheap.

Sometimes the EU seems to make it easy for Chinese low-cost manufacturers to get their hazardous goods to European consumers. For example, many people believe that Europe's "CE" label on household appliances is only allowed to be printed on products that have been subject to official inspections. But in reality, any producer can slap this label on his cheaply made toaster or water wings if he is of the personal opinion that all EU guidelines have been followed. It's an open invitation to deceit. "The CE label," says consumer protector authority Maurer, "is abused by Chinese companies unscrupulously."