The Bush administration's cabinet-level Interagency Working Group on Import Safety released its final report Nov. 6 on ways to improve the safety of food and consumer products imported into the U.S. The report calls for limited increases in some federal agencies' responsibilities but does little to change the current voluntary regulatory scheme that governs some $2 trillion worth of products, 800,000 importers and more than 300 ports-of-entry.

President Bush created the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Import Safety by Executive Order 13439 (E.O.) on July 18 in the midst of recurring recalls and safety warnings about imported food, toys, pet food and toothpaste. According to the E.O., the mission of the IWG "shall be to identify actions and appropriate steps that can be pursued, within existing resources, to promote the safety of imported products." The message from Bush was clear that no additional budget resources would be forthcoming for improved safety. One of the report's "points of clarification" underscores the lack of urgency on the part of the administration:

Resources — To implement the Action Plan to its fullest extent will require resources. Federal departments and agencies will coordinate, plan effectively and meet these goals by submitting additional funding needs through the normal budget process.

The Action Plan for Import Safety: A Roadmap for Continual Improvement contains fourteen broad recommendations and fifty specific action steps. The recommendations are grouped under the principles of prevention, intervention and response. Some of the fourteen recommendations include recognition that improvements to the import safety system are necessary. For example, the report recommends that new and existing standards need to be created and strengthened, certification programs need to be used to improve safety compliance, and enforcement needs to be stronger. Under the enforcement recommendation, one action step is a call for an increase in the Consumer Product Safety Act's civil penalty cap for violators, from $1.8 million to $10 million.

Underlying the Action Plan, however, are two philosophical choices that indicate that this is not an urgent attempt to improve the safety of the millions of imported products that reach U.S. shores. First, it is clearly written that these import safety reforms need to be accomplished without disrupting the flow of commerce. For example, a text box in the action plan that precedes the recommendations states, "The recommendations in this Action Plan are designed to promote safety while avoiding restrictions on the flow of international trade." The Plan creates an explicit private-public partnership where government is a business partner rather than a regulator protecting the public.

The Action Plan calls for a series of incentives such as an information network and technical assistance programs. Incentive programs can be effective if industry knows that there is a threat of direct regulatory action. However, the incentives in the Plan are coupled largely with voluntary approaches that encourage self-regulation by industry and the development of industry-wide standards.

Second, the Plan emphasizes a "cost-effective, risk-based approach" that relies on using market-based and regulatory incentives and deterrents. Risk-based systems require the identification and ranking of risks assuming nothing changes with regard to the business practices and processes employed. Under this approach, the agencies are to identify the points of highest risk and divert resources to intervening and responding to potential dangers. So, for example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to prevent the intentional contamination of the food supply, would "issue regulations to require companies to implement practical food defense measures at specific points in the food supply chain where the potential for intentional adulteration resulting in serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals is the greatest."

The problem with this risk-based approach is that it is a static analysis and doesn't consider the question of how we might change the existing system that causes the damage in the first place. Are there better ways of producing goods so that the dangers from lead exposure, for example, are prevented? Instead, the Plan acknowledges that "the recall process is the principal tool in the arsenal of response mechanisms to protect consumers from exposure to hazardous products." This is an implicit acknowledgement that the prevention approaches outlined in the Plan are not capable of preventing hazardous products from reaching U.S. markets, so the agencies need to have mechanisms to respond to accidents.

The Action Plan falls short of congressional proposals to improve import safety. As OMB Watch has recently described in a series of articles (for example, here and here) on product safety, Congress is explicitly proposing budget and personnel increases for the major regulatory agencies with jurisdiction over food and consumer products. And there have been consistent calls for banning lead in children's toys.

In a Consumers Union press release issued Nov. 6, the organization criticized the Action Plan. "Furthermore, we see no recommendation about reducing lead in children's products. We support getting toxic lead out of all consumer products, but especially children's toys and other products they use. With lead-tainted products flooding the market, we are disappointed the Administration appears to have missed an important moment to support eliminating this health threat," said Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives.