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THE THREAT OF CHINA’S UNSAFE CONSUMABLES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND 

EMERGING THREATS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 8, 2013

Serial No. 113–25

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

TOM COTTON, Arkansas 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

TREY RADEL, Florida 

DOUG COLLINS, Georgia 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

LUKE MESSER, Indiana 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

BRADLEY S. SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS

DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman 

TED POE, Texas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

PAUL COOK, California 

GEORGE HOLDING, North Carolina 

STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. Mark Kastel, co-founder, The Cornucopia Institute ...................................... 8

Mr. William Triplett II, author and consultant (former chief Republican counsel, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations) .................................................... 14

Ms. Patty Lovera, assistant director, Food & Water Watch ................................ 26

Ms. Sophie Richardson, China director, Human Rights Watch ........................... 43

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of California, and chairman, Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and 

Emerging Threats: Prepared statement ............................................................. 4

Mr. Mark Kastel: Prepared statement ................................................................... 10

Mr. William Triplett II: Prepared statement ........................................................ 16

Ms. Patty Lovera: Prepared statement .................................................................. 28

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 54

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 55

Ms. Sophie Richardson: Material submitted for the record ................................. 56

(1)

THE THREAT OF CHINA’S UNSAFE 

CONSUMABLES 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o’clock p.m., in 

room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I call to order this hearing of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. Today’s topic is ‘‘The Threat of China’s Unsafe Consummables,’’ an 

emerging threat. 

After the ranking members and I each take our 5 minutes to 

make opening remarks, each member present will have 1 minute 

to make some opening remarks as well, alternating between majority and minority members and without objection all members will 

have 5 days to submit statements, questions, extraneous material 

for the record. Hearing no objections, so ordered. 

Who could forget that agricultural interests were the driving 

force behind various trading and trade-expanding understandings 

that our country has had with the communist Chinese regime in 

Beijing. Who would have thought that the People’s Republic of 

China would become a significant food exporter, especially of fruits, 

vegetables, seafood, and dairy products? The farming community, 

the agricultural industry puts so much effort because they just saw 

this as a market for their goods, never did they consider that these 

would be competitors and competitors that did not have to meet the 

same standards that they have. 

Chinese industry has also become a major producer of drugs and 

chemicals used in both medicine and food processing and yes, and 

in manufacturing as well. Thus, the health and safety not only of 

the United States and Europe, but that of people around the world 

has become dependent on the quality of goods imported from 

China. Yet, the task of inspecting and testing Chinese goods is beyond the ability of governments. Considering the magnitude of that 

challenge, it is beyond their ability to do a good job or at least that 

is what I am suggesting. We will hear from our witnesses what 

they think about that. 

Astonishingly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspects 

less than 2 percent of the food imports from China. This is a major 

security concern. Why? Because the record of Chinese quality in 

2

their food production is extremely poor. Indeed, CNN reported 

Monday that poultry workers moving to and from wet markets and 

farms may be responsible for the spread of the deadly H7N9 virus 

in China, read that, the bird flu virus. We import poultry now to 

feed animals, but the FDA may soon approve the importation of 

China poultry for human consumption. Now does this move make 

sense at all? 

Ronald Reagan once said of the Soviet Union, ‘‘trust, but verify.’’ 

In regards to Communist China, however, we cannot trust, nor can 

we verify. China producers are motivated to cut corners, dilute content, counterfeit products to maximize profits, and keep prices so 

low as to dominate export markets. Chinese supervision and regulation is weak and corrupt. We have the irony of a communist system that has spawned the most predatory capitalism of all. The result is food that makes you sick and drugs that will not make you 

well and could well kill you. 

Even the state-owned media knows the problem. Last October, 

China Daily cited a marketing survey which found and I quote, 

‘‘Food safety is a top concern for Chinese shoppers, especially regarding such produce as vegetables, meat, seafood, grain, cooking 

oils, and dairy foods.’’ If this is true within China, then it should 

also be true for foreign markets. And a series of scandals involving 

toxic chemicals and other fillers in food products around the world 

confirm this. Yet, Chinese agricultural exports continue to increase, 

driven by their low prices. 

The same is true in the pharmaceutical industry. There has been 

movement, again unexpected, of much of that industry from the 

United States to China. Just like in the agricultural area we saw 

a whole industry shift over to China that was never predicted by 

agriculture, while it also hasn’t been predicted by the pharmaceutical industry. Beijing has been allowed, for example, to join the 

World Trade Organization which helped this shift. This shift was 

motivated by a desire to cut costs by using cheap Chinese labor and 

by avoiding expensive regulation. This opened the door not only to 

lower quality output, but made it easier for counterfeiters to infiltrate the supply side and supply chains of our pharmaceutical 

products. Drugs with weak dosages or no active ingredients at all 

endanger public health and discredit treatment programs. Fake 

drugs undermine U.S. efforts to treat illnesses in developing countries. For example, the State Department has requested $650 million in 2014 to fight malaria in developing countries. Yet, half that 

anti-malarial drugs that are on the market in South Asia and Africa have been found to be counterfeit. And most of these fake drugs 

come from where? China. 

Fakes also threatened the campaign against diabetes and other 

significant and debilitating diseases. 

Besides the global health, safety, and security threats created by 

unscrupulous Chinese business practices and the corrupt lack of 

supervision by Chinese authorities, there is a competitive issue as 

well. American farmers are the most productive in the world and 

are held to rigorous standards. The same is true of the American 

pharmaceutical industry which creates the world’s most advanced 

medicines. Yet, if U.S. exports are defeated in the market place on 

3

the basis of lower prices stemming from illicit cost cutting, then the 

American producer as well as our entire economy will suffer. 

Counterfeit products are often sold under the brand new of the 

legitimate product such as Pfizer or Lipitor, or several others. Indeed, there has been and there is hardly an American company 

that has not been victimized by this Chinese larceny. And when 

the product does not work, the brand is held responsible. But yet 

it is not the people of that company that has been making the product. It is a knockoff by some Chinese company that has been permitted to do so by the Chinese authorities that should be enforcing 

the rule of law. 

Now if you end up having a Chinese company under the name 

of another company, an American company or whatever, what we 

have done is we have slandered the name of an American company 

and we have slandered the ability of the people of the United 

States and our system as well because we have basically been at 

that point saying to the world this is what our products are like, 

but it is not our product. This is something we have got to stop if 

we are going to maintain the integrity and the trust that the people around the world have in American products. Not to mention 

we have got to stop it because there are people who are being injured and killed because they are using these phony products that 

are being manufactured by someone else other than who is on the 

label. 

Are there measures we can take to persuade China not to do certain things or things that China can be persuaded to do to safeguard consumers from dangerous exports? Or what steps can we 

take or should we just ban all such goods from China from the 

marketplace because they are inherently unsafe. Well, that is a 

question we will have to talk about today. The production and distribution of such critical goods as food and medicine upon which 

life itself depends cannot be trusted unless there is integrity 

throughout the manufacturing and supply chains. We have gathered this panel of experts to help us decide what the policy options 

are. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. With that, Mr. Keating, would you have an 

opening statement? 

Mr. KEATING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding today’s hearing. From tires to toothpaste to toys, Chinese imports account for more than 50 percent of the recalls announced by 

the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And China’s monetary 

policies do not make it any easier for safer, American-made products to compete with their cheaper Chinese counterparts. Ultimately China’s policies affect the safety of our children, our parents, grandparents, and pets here at home. 

Increasingly, the conversation in Congress has turned to China 

as a rising super power that is increasingly investing in emerging 

markets worldwide, but the fact of the matter is that China still 

lacks the necessary governmental institutions based in rule of law, 

transparency, and accountability to be able to regulate its own 

products. Further, these institutional weaknesses extend to the 

realm of human rights abuses and media repression within China. 

During the 2008 Olympic games in China, an official ban on reporting ‘‘all food safety issues’’ banned media from reporting on at 

least 20 dairy firms that were selling milk products that contained 

the chemical melamine. That coverup contributed to the deaths of 

six children and the illnesses among 300,000 others. And when 

Chinese officials attempted to enforce regulations which they have 

been doing as of late, their institutional weaknesses come back to 

haunt them. Just this year, in response to a campaign to crack 

down on marketing sick pigs in China, the Ministry of Public Security has been raiding farms, arresting violators, and then confiscating unsafe pork meat. 

According to the Council on Foreign Relations during the celebration of the Lunar Chinese New York this year, the police stepped 

up efforts to rid the market of tainted pork meat. However, in absence of collaboration from other departments, these well-intended 

efforts led to over 6,000 unmarketable dead pigs being dumped into 

a local river. Thousands of carcasses were discovered floating in the 

Huangpu River which supplies drinking water to Shanghai’s 23 

million residents. The domestic implications for this huge and incredibly concerning practice are yet to be fully understood. 

There are international implications as well. According to the 

same Council on Foreign Relations report, in 2011 alone China produced more than 50 million metric tons of pork accounting for 

nearly half the world-wide pork production. And unfortunately, we 

can easily list other instances like this throughout China as well 

as one recall after another for Chinese products in our own country 

here at home. For this reason, and the fact that China has been 

extending operations into developing regions of the world with even 

weaker standards, I do agree with you that China’s unsafe products have the potential to become an even more widespread threat 

to global health and global safety. 

I hope that today’s hearing will shed some light as to why and 

which way we can proceed as a country to really protect our consumers at home and protect consumers throughout the world. I 

welcome our witnesses and look forward to their testimonies. And 

with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

7

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you for that very provocative opening 

statement. It gives new meaning to sweet and sour pork you might 

say. I now recognize Steve Stockman, the outspoken member of our 

committee from Texas. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad you put 

this hearing together. We have in our district, rice, catfish, and 

pharmaceuticals. You can trust ours, and our labeling. And someone who buys organic food and purchases organic food, and now 

finds that the society which professes to be socialist and caring, 

and not driven by greed, is actually driven by greed and mislabels 

organic food and other products is very Orwellian, I guess, to say 

the least. I thank you for holding these hearings. I am looking forward to the testimonies of our guests today. Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. It is ironic that for all 

of these years, the communists were talking about how horrible 

free enterprise and capitalism is and here they have turned their 

back on their own country while they still have a government that 

claims allegiance to Marx and Lenin and they just turned their 

back on this most predatory and awful example of irresponsibility 

in the name of making a profit. 

Now today we have four witnesses and what I am going to do 

is introduce all four now and then we will each have about 5 minutes to give your presentation. Anything more than that we will be 

happy to put in the record and then we will have some questions 

and answers. First, we have William Triplett. He is an author and 

consultant with great experience with China. You have been a consultant for four decades now. Mr. Triplett began his professional 

career with the American intelligence community working China 

issues overseas. Later, he was the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade 

Representative for the East-West meaning China during the first 

Reagan administration. He served for 9 years on the staff of the 

Senate Foreign Relations Committee reaching the post of chief Republican counsel to the committee. His most recent—he has several 

books—is Bowing To Beijing, published last year and he is a frequent contributor to newspapers and professional journals. 

We also have with us Patty Lovera and she is assistant director 

of the nonprofit Food & Water Watch where she coordinates the organization’s food policy program. She has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and a master’s degree in environmental policy 

from the University of Michigan. Before joining the Food & Water 

Watch, she was a deputy director of the Energy and Environment 

Program at Public Citizen and a researcher at the Center for 

Health, Environment, and Justice. 

We have with us also Mark Kastel and is co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, a foreign policy research group based in Wisconsin and director of its Organic Integrity Project. For almost 20 

years prior to the launch of this institute, he was president of M.A. 

Kastel and Associates, a professional practice that include political 

consulting, lobbying, business development, and benefitting family 

scale farmers. 

Finally, Sophie Richardson is the China director at the Human 

Rights Watch, a graduate of the University of Virginia, the Hopkins-Nanjing Program and Oberlin College. Dr. Richardson is the 

author of numerous articles on domestic Chinese political reform, 

8

democratization and human rights in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, 

Hong Kong and the Philippines and Vietnam. Her book, ‘‘China, 

Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’’ was 

published by Columbia University Press and is an in-depth examination of China’s foreign policy since the 1954 Geneva Conference. 

With that said, we have our witnesses with us today and we will 

start with Mr. Kastel. 

STATEMENT OF MR. MARK KASTEL, CO–FOUNDER, THE 

CORNUCOPIA INSTITUTE 

Mr. KASTEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Mark Alan 

Kastel. I am the co-director and act as senior farm policy analyst 

at The Cornucopia Institute. We are based in Cornucopia, Wisconsin. 

Cornucopia is a tax-exempt farm policy research group. We act 

as an organic industry watchdog. 

We have long been concerned about the propriety of organic commodities and finished products being imported into the United 

States from China. 

Mr. Chairman, many in this country, for good reason, based on 

history, do not trust the Chinese to supply ingredients for our dog 

and our cat food. Why should we trust these Chinese exporters 

with food that we are feeding our children and our families? 

Besides any specific concerns and evidence regarding organics, 

this is a country with endemic levels of commercial fraud whether 

in intellectual property, the counterfeiting of name-brand consumer 

products, or being engaged in industrial espionage. 

The organic marketplace was founded as an ethical alternative 

for consumers seeking safer and more nutritious food to serve their 

families. We looked at Chinese organics as part of our research and 

investigation in preparing our report, ‘‘Behind the Bean.’’ We found 

that although there were many exemplary U.S. manufacturers, the 

majority of the participants in the organic soy industry were shifting to Chinese organic imports. And in particular, we highlighted 

Dean Foods’ WhiteWave Division which manufactures the marketleader, Silk soy milk. They threw U.S. organic producers under the 

bus by asking them to match cheaper Chinese prices which they 

were unable to do. 

In Cornucopia’s 2009 Soy Food Report, we estimated that as 

much as half of all organic soybeans being sold in the United 

States came from overseas, primarily China. It is probably higher 

now. 

We were told by domestic soybean buyers and processors of foodgrade soybeans that brokers came to them with a choice. They had 

A beans and B beans. What is the difference? The brokers told us 

that the A beans were from farms and suppliers they had personally visited in China and they could vouch for the authenticity of 

the product. And the B beans? Well, the brokers had a piece of 

paper, a certification document that says they are organic. And 

they are cheaper. 

Most commonly we found that the ones that got purchased were 

the B beans. 

In February 2011, the USDA’s National Organic Program started 

informing the public of fraudulent organic certificates, these pieces 

9

of paper that I referenced. They found that of 22 fraudulent organic 

certificates since that point in time, 9 were from China. The next 

highest country had only three from India where we are also seeing 

an exponential increase in organic imports. 

And whether it is melamine contaminating processed food, rat 

meat masquerading as lamb, or dead hogs floating down that river 

you referenced, we don’t trust—the Chinese don’t trust the food 

they are producing. Why should we? 

The USDA and FDA inspectors are only examining as referenced 

1–2 percent of all food that reaches U.S. ports. And what are they 

finding? A disproportionate number of serious problems from 

China: Adulteration, unapproved chemicals, dyes, pesticides, and 

outright fraud, fake food. 

The remaining 98 percent that is not inspected, well, that might 

be on your table tonight for dinner or at the restaurant you might 

be enjoying. 

The largest organic farmer cooperative in this country, Organic 

Valley, is now exporting packaged milk to China. You can understand why a growing, affluent cross section of the Chinese populace 

is buying imported U.S. commodities. What do they know that 

many in the United States don’t know about the safety of Chinese 

food? 

The farmers I work for have names and they have a story and 

they have a background and they are competing with these pieces 

of paper. Organics continue to grow even in this tight economy, but 

for the first time we are seeing a net loss in the number of organic 

farmers in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain States and we are losing thousands of acres of farmland. We can’t compete with the Chinese without a level playing field in terms of aggressive certification and enforcement of organic law. 

In conclusion, the Cornucopia Institute welcomes congressional 

pressure on the FDA and USDA to fulfill their mandates, to protect 

domestic farmers, organic consumers and all consumers from the 

dangerous fraud in the importation of food from China, India, 

former Soviet bloc states, or any other country exporting poison to 

our shores and we hope that you folks will adequately augment 

their budget and watchdog them to make sure they are carrying 

out their missions. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kastel follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. That was very 

thoughtful. We will have some questions. 

Mr. Triplett. 

STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM TRIPLETT II, AUTHOR AND CONSULTANT (FORMER CHIEF REPUBLICAN COUNSEL, SENATE 

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS) 

Mr. TRIPLETT. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and Distinguished 

Ranking Member. I am William C. Triplett II, and with the committee’s permission I would like my prepared statement put in the 

record and I will speak just briefly off the cuff. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Certainly with no objection. Thank you. 

Mr. TRIPLETT. Last week, they had a lot of fun with the rat meat 

story that was in the newspaper and on headlines and so forth. 

Chinese Supreme Court Judge was quoted, ‘‘The situation is really 

gray and has indeed caused great harm to the people.’’ Certainly, 

he is right. And he is talking about the Chinese people, but the obvious problem is that that stuff comes to us, too. 

There is three ways we can look at it. One is the adulterated food 

issue. The second one is their deficient health system. And the 

third one which I would like to talk about a little bit is pollution 

for thee, but not for me. One of the things we have known for a 

long time is that the Chinese cadres had their own farms. They 

don’t trust the food and so forth and so on. That is number one. 

The farmers themselves don’t trust their own food. They won’t eat 

what they produce, so they ship it to another province. Rich people 

are leaving the country and in the exit interviews they are being 

asked why are you leaving and the answer is because of food safety 

and so forth and so on. One of the other things is Chinese communist officials even have special filters on the buildings that they 

work in so that they don’t have to breathe the foul air. 

Now the issue of is this becoming our problem, I have a graph 

in the prepared statement that shows that in the last 3 years, Chinese agricultural imports are going up by about $1⁄2 billion a year. 

That is the first graph. And of course, imports of poultry are going 

up at an even higher rate. 

The question is can the Chinese solve the problem on their own? 

I don’t think that I know anybody who studies this closely who 

really thinks the Chinese can handle it themselves. I think the system is simply too corrupt and I think we are going to hear that 

from several of the witnesses today and so forth and so on. 

I would like to turn to what the Congress and the committee can 

do about it. First and foremost, I want to commend the committee 

for holding this hearing. That is the alpha, if you will, of the alpha 

and omega of solutions because without this kind of a hearing, then 

this issue will get lost with the other issues. 

The second end of the issue is this is the omega. And that is 

when China becomes a democratic country, then the people will demand safe food and safe food for them will then ultimately mean 

safe food for us. So we are between these two ends. The question 

is what to do in the middle? 

I have a lot of experience, as the chairman well knows, in arms 

smuggling of Chinese to terrorist countries and groups and so forth 

and so on. Smuggling is a real big deal. I would hope the comVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:43 Jun 11, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_EEET\050813\80800 HFA PsN: SHIRL
15

mittee would encourage the usual suspects to find out basically 

who is involved, who are the names, who are the corrupt officials 

and so forth and so on who are engaged in this food safety business. That is the first thing. Let us take names. 

The second thing is I think we need to change the terms of reference. New York Times today had a big story about how we need 

$3 billion more for food inspection. I am generally sympathetic with 

that, but on the other hand if you look at the honey case, I am not 

sure how much money would be sufficient and I think the onus 

should go the other direction and that is the Chinese would basically guarantee that their food is safe. 

The other thing is a question of draconian punishments. Congress has a history of imposing draconian punishments, the Toshiba case being the most famous example. And also this committee has jurisdiction over the International Emergency Economic 

Powers Act. 

Third, I have included something called the strategic policy 

framework which was circulated in the last Congress and is essentially a way to organized looking at Chinese issues from a comprehensive standpoint. So if you put the three together, take 

names, that is number one. Number two is change the terms of reference. Number three, begin to talk about really draconian measures against some of the people who are engaged in this and then 

do this all in a comprehensive way. I think that would be the best 

of my suggestions. Thank you very much for the opportunity to 

speak. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Triplett follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. And Ms. Lovera 

STATEMENT OF MS. PATTY LOVERA, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, 

FOOD & WATER WATCH 

Ms. LOVERA. Good afternoon. My name is Patty Lovera and I am 

the assistant director of Food & Water Watch. We are a nonprofit 

consumer advocacy organization and we appreciate the opportunity 

to present testimony on this important topic. 

As we have discussed, the United States is increasingly reliant 

on imported food and China is in the position as the world’s largest 

agricultural economy to send us a lot of the food that we are importing. We import over 1 billion pounds of fruits and vegetables 

from China every year and over 1 billion pounds of fish and seafood. For some products, like apple juice and garlic, China has already started to replace domestic production of crops that we have 

traditionally grown here. And it is not just fresh produce or even 

fruits and vegetables and seafood. We are increasingly bringing in 

processed foods and the ingredients that we use in processed foods. 

In 2010, we imported 81 million pounds of spices and 41 million 

pounds of pasta and baked goods from China. 

I have included some charts with a lot more data on these trends 

in the written testimony that I have submitted. 

Food safety problems in China have obviously been making headlines for a while. We spoke already about contamination of foods 

with melamine. The one point I will add to the melamine story is 

why melamine was in the food. So melamine is an ingredient in 

plastics and it has been intentionally added to these food products 

to try to artificially increase the nitrogen contents in those foods, 

to attempt to beat laboratory tests for protein levels. So this was 

not an accidental contamination. This was intentional adulterated 

with an economic motive, to try to beat laboratory tests. 

So despite very public efforts in recent years by the Chinese Government to crack down on food safety problems, it is kind of a continual feed of bad news from the food safety front from China. We 

have heard a lot of these examples already. 

I do want to spend a minute talking about what our Government 

is doing in terms of protecting U.S. consumers with our oversight 

of these imports. We have already heard that the FDA can inspect 

less than 2 percent of imported produce, processed food, and seafood which we think almost guarantees that some unsafe Chinese 

products are going to make their way on to our store shelves. 

The FDA opened its first office in China in 2008. However, the 

few FDA inspectors in China are overwhelmed by the sheer size of 

the nation’s food production including an estimated 1 million food 

processing companies. In Fiscal Year 2012, FDA conducted ten inspections of food facilities in China. 

When it comes to meat and poultry imports, that is the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture. And we are not yet importing meat and poultry for human consumption from China, but that 

process is underway and we are concerned about the way that 

USDA is regulating imports of these products from other countries 

and what that will mean if China does get approved. The USDA 

recently announced in 2009 that it made a major change to its 

oversight of imports by ending annual in-depth audit visits it 

27

would make to exporting countries. Now they are relying on a selfreporting tool for countries as a substitute. And that means they 

are going to do those audit visits every 3 years instead of annually. 

So if we reach a point and the process is ongoing now where China 

gets approved as equivalent to send processed chicken products 

here, we worry that that is the process the USDA will use and it 

is clearly not sufficient. 

Just a few recommendations that we would have about what we 

can be doing on the U.S. front to protect consumers from this situation? We think in the big picture it is really important to think 

about that this is not an unforeseeable outcome. This is not an accident. We are combining trade policy that makes the U.S. more 

and more reliant on importing food with a food safety regulatory 

system that is not up to the job of dealing with that rising tide of 

imports. So in addition to examining our trade policy, we think we 

also need to really take a hard look at the changes we need to 

make to our food safety programs. 

So specifically, we think the USDA should conduct an entirely 

new investigation before allowing Chinese poultry products to be 

exported to the United States. If these imports are approved, 

USDA should permanently assign inspection personnel to China so 

that the exporting plants receive regular visits by USDA inspectors. 

When it comes to the FDA, they need the resources to conduct 

more inspections in food facilities in China rather than relying on 

third party certifications of the safety practices used by exporting 

firms. So this is a model that is being proposed under new food 

safety legislation that would make the FDA very reliant on using 

third parties to verify that food from other countries is safe. We 

don’t think that is adequate for U.S. consumers. It is the government’s job to do these safety inspections. So we are quite concerned 

about that. 

And then finally, consumers do have one tool right now to protect 

themselves which is country of origin labeling which is mandatory, 

thanks to Federal law. It covers meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables and some nuts, but there are problems in the coverage of that 

labeling program because of the way that USDA has defined the 

word processed. The law says processed foods don’t get a label. 

USDA wrote an incredibly broad definition of processed, so a lot of 

forms of these foods that should be covered are not required to 

have a label. So we think that USDA should change that definition 

so consumers get more coverage of the country of origin label. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Lovera follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Ms. Richardson. 

STATEMENT OF MS. SOPHIE RICHARDSON, CHINA DIRECTOR, 

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to the 

members of the subcommittee for holding this timely——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We are going to need you a little closer to the 

mic or whatever we can do there. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. How is that? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is great. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. In Human Rights Watch’s view, the integrity 

of products made in China, whether they are for domestic consumption or for export is directly related to the government’s respect for the freedom of expression, access to information, and the 

independence of the legal system. In other words, the lack of protections, the lack of upholding these particular rights make it extremely difficult to ensure whether products are safe, whether 

products are what they say they are, or whether consumers here 

or there have any means of real effective redress. 

In one particularly telling example of the Chinese Government’s 

choice to suppress information as Mr. Keating referred to in his 

opening remarks, Chinese journalists were ready in the early summer of 2008 to report the melamine scandal but because of the ban 

on bad news in the run up to the 2008 Olympics, those journalists 

were not allowed to report that story until much later in the year 

by which point 300,000 kids had gotten sick and at least 6 had 

died. So the government was perfectly willing to suppress news 

even that which posed a clear public safety threat. 

It is also worth noting that in November 2010 a Beijing court 

sentenced a man named Zhao Lianhai to 21⁄2 years in prison on 

charges of causing a public disturbance which we found particularly ironic description of the actions of man who in the face of his 

own child’s melamine-induced illness had sought to organize other 

parents to file a class action lawsuit. Even now 5 years later, it is 

not hard to find newspaper articles about Chinese consumers either going abroad specifically for the purpose of or incidental to 

outside travel purchasing baby milk formula because concerns 

about those products still run so deep. 

To us, it is of equal concern the range of issues on which the Chinese domestic press and the international press continue to be prevented from reporting in a timely manner, whether it is about 

chemical spills, infectious disease outbreaks or public unrest in response to environmental problems. This puts all of us at risk. 

I think the problems aren’t just a question of what does or 

doesn’t make it into a newspaper or what products make it into an 

export stream, but also about what kinds of information ordinary 

people inside China can have access to. I have also submitted into 

the record a report we wrote in 2011 about the lead poisoning of 

children in four provinces in China. These were children of people 

who either worked in battery factories or lived near facilities that 

processed products made with lead. None of those facilities operated in compliance with domestic laws on health and safety obligations. Many of them were operating in violation of close-down orders. Several of them had been fined, but paid the fines and continVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:43 Jun 11, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_EEET\050813\80800 HFA PsN: SHIRL
44

ued to operate. And we think this was largely a result of commingling of economic and political interests in those areas. It is a common dynamic across the country. 

Parents of sick children were repeatedly thwarted, not only in 

their efforts to get accurate tests. Parents told us repeatedly about 

being given falsified test results. Parents who went to the provincial capital to file complaints or try to file lawsuits were turned 

back. Some of them, in fact, were arrested, essentially in pursuit 

of simply trying to get accurate diagnoses and some sort of compensation or assistance for their gravely-ill children. 

I think it is the case that while there are more regulations than 

rhetoric now particularly coming out of the new leadership about 

pollution and about public health, it is very hard to see how those 

have become actionable tools for people to get educated, get help, 

or hold officials or companies to account. 

On the question of what remains to be done, clearly, and many 

people at this table are much better equipped to talk about the regulatory regimes and what fixes there need to be taken than I am, 

but this is obviously I think consistent with, for example, ICE’s 

problems and even accessing the facilities to check for prison-made 

goods. There is a long history of the challenges of inspections inside 

the country. 

But I think it is also not just a question of regulation of inspection regimes. There are issues about information, freedom of express, at stake. And I think it is not just up to the State Department or specific cabinet members to raise those issues. I think it 

is very clear that for the FDA, for their agencies to talk about access to information and freedom of expression in China is more 

meaningful than it ever has been in the past. 

I also think there is a lot of room for U.S. officials from a variety 

of agencies to take these issues up with counterparts other than 

the Foreign Ministry or the Ministry of Health, such as the Supreme Court or the Public Security Bureau. Thank you very much. 

[Ms. Richardson did not submit a prepared statement.] 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Thank all of you for 

beginning this discussion. It is the chair’s intention to let Mr. 

Keating, the ranking member, go first in the questions and then 

Mr. Stockman from Texas, and then I will—I think they call it in 

baseball, I will clean up. 

Mr. KEATING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had a thought listening to you, Ms. Richardson, that in the absence of the media 

being able to disclose things, what effect, if any, has the social 

media been able to do to get the word out to Chinese people that 

there are dangers in their food and specifically when these instances occur, and there is illness attached, to alert people in that 

respect? Has it been helpful in that way? 

Ms. RICHARDSON. Certainly it is an incredibly powerful tool for 

alerting people to specifically which kinds of products or which 

companies’ products are problematic. At the same time, first of all, 

social media is subject to the same kinds of censorship the official 

print media is or electronic media. And so sometimes that information is quashed fairly quickly. 

I don’t have a lot of specific research to point to this, but it is 

also become more common in the last 4 or 5 years for journalists 

45

and even sort of citizen journalists to be charged with spreading 

rumors. There is actually a specified—it is considered an administrative violation rather than a criminal one, but I think it makes 

some people nervous about sharing information that could be construed as reporting a rumor rather than a fact. 

Mr. KEATING. Mr. Triplett, you mentioned the effects of this on 

America’s business community here at home. Could you comment, 

and any of our panelists, on how it affects America’s interests from 

a business perspective abroad with us trying to do business 

abroad? 

Mr. TRIPLETT. Yes, sir. Of course, we know that the Chinese are 

the biggest counterfeiters in the world. And so it is one thing to 

counterfeit something and make it work right and so forth and so 

on, but if you make something that is, in fact, poisonous, then obviously you damage the brand of the American firm as well. I think 

that is a whole wider issue that you can get into. That gets into 

things besides consumables as well. There have been rumors for 

years about the Chinese having UL labels that were faked. And so 

somebody thinks abroad, let us say you see something that is made 

in the United States, has a UL label on it and if it is possibly faked 

by the Chinese, then obviously you lose business all the way 

around. 

It is part of the whole larger thing which is one of the reasons 

why I am suggesting that the committee return to the idea of a 

comprehensive approach to the various kinds of Chinese problems. 

You all had hearings on Chinese cyber terrorism, correct? So that 

is an issue. Food safety is an issue. Arms smuggling, I would 

argue, is an issue, and so forth and so on. And to the extent that 

the Congress can look at this comprehensively, I think that is probably a good idea. Thank you. 

Mr. KEATING. To any of our panelists, Chinese officials have been 

making some attempts to increase regulation and enforcement targeting polluting factories. Have these attempts been making a difference at all in addressing the urgent and long-term health consequences associated with the levels of lead seen in villages like 

Henan, and Hunan, Shaanxi, and Yunnan. Those kind of villages, 

there are reports that there is lead polluting those villages. Are 

any of you aware of the efforts they are making on trying to regulate this kind of pollution, if they are effective at all? 

Ms. LOVERA. I am not familiar specifically with lead programs, 

but I mean when we look at food safety stories and we are trying 

to track what is coming out of China, it does appear that there is 

kind of a broad attempt to really put on a very public effort to 

crack down on problems. There is something often in the news 

about the crackdown. Last week it was fake meat. It is pretty constant. I mean one of the issues when you are talking about something that is as pervasive as entire villages being contaminated, 

the question is then where are you going to grow the food? The 

lead is not just going to go away because they deal with the polluting factor. It is in the soil. 

Why I can speak to the best is that we don’t have a regulatory 

system here to know what province or let alone village a product 

would come from if it was shipped here and we don’t really have 

a system that is going to very often do a lab test to look for lead 

46

levels. We tend to find that kind of thing when there is a problem 

and work backwards and then find a source. We are not intercepting things when they are coming into the U.S. 

Mr. KEATING. I have a question. Go ahead. 

Ms. RICHARDSON. I would just add to that a couple of points. 

Shortly after we released this report about lead poisoning, there 

was an announcement by the Ministry of Environment that about 

500 battery-producing factories were going to be shut down. We 

have tried to track that over the years to see if they actually were 

shut down, if they stayed shut down, if, in fact, they reopened, 

whether the necessary protective practices had been put in place 

and it is extremely difficult to discern whether that has actually 

happened. 

Look, we see this on lots of different issues of a problem reaches 

a certain level of publicity inside China. The government says we 

are going to crack down on it. And a year later we are having the 

same conversation. I did also want to pick up on the point that Ms. 

Lovera just made because when we were doing this research, we 

were also trying to figure out if any of the batteries that were being 

produced in these factories actually were turning up in the U.S. or 

were being on sold into an export chain. It was either going from 

the China end to here or going from here backwards. It was almost 

impossible to figure out. We didn’t have the resources to try to 

track the products along the way. So for all I know, products that 

got made in these very factories wound up here. But we should be 

able to know that. We should be able to figure that out more easily 

I think. 

Mr. KEATING. Thank you. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you and now Mr. Stockman. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. I have a question. If we—first of all, I would 

have expected Diane Sawyer or someone from ABC, NBC, CBS, 

anybody to cover this. This is a national problem. My question for 

you is, if we publicize your names and make some statements, 

some of the frustrations I get when I am on a committee I will reiterate some of the things and I am not saying you have done this, 

then the press calls up and they say well, that is not exactly what 

we said. 

I think this is very alarming what we are hearing today and had 

another nation or other nations done this, I think many people 

would view it almost as an act of war. And that is alarming. Ms. 

Richardson, your statement that they allowed their own citizens to 

die just so they could have a good face on the Olympics and that 

they are willing to sacrifice their own children, their own children 

for the purpose of national pride. I don’t think then that we fall 

anywhere near their own children. So I don’t see how their concerns, what I am saying is if they don’t seem to care about their 

own kids, why would they care about us? They can’t run their own 

food program, but they are somehow going to have compassion for 

us? That is simply not true. 

I was wondering, which company, is Walmart one of the ones 

that imports the most Chinese food for their groceries, do you 

know? 

Mr. KASTEL. It is really across the board. The organic industry 

has been the subject of corporate takeover so to speak through 

47

mergers and acquisitions, so most of the major name brands are 

controlled by familiar agribusinesses like Dean Foods and General 

Mills and Kraft and Smuckers. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Have you gone to those farms that claim to be 

organic in China? 

Mr. KASTEL. No. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Would they let you come there? 

Mr. KASTEL. No. This is a really good question. I mean they will 

limit our access. As an industry watchdog, we actually had some 

inspectors on the ground before the melamine problem reared its 

ugly head. These people withdrew. In fact, we had two sets of independent, nonprofit inspectors. They weren’t necessarily experts in 

terms of agriculture. They were normally inspecting workplace environments, but both groups of inspectors withdrew because they 

were afraid for their own personal safety. They couldn’t get near 

these facilities. 

It is even worse. Now you are a consumer of organic food? 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Yes. 

Mr. KASTEL. We appreciate that. The farmers that are members 

of the Cornucopia Institute and the farmers that are certified 

under the USDA accreditation program are visited every year by 

a USDA accredited certifier. The USDA directly supervises these 

certifiers, so there is this third party oversight and then you have 

got nonprofit, public interest groups watching the corporations and 

watching the government officials. That doesn’t happen in China. 

There are no U.S. certification agencies. All the USDA certification 

happens by foreign certifiers mostly from Europe. They can’t even 

go unencumbered and inspect these farms. They have to be accompanied by a Chinese certification entity. The farmland is actually 

owned by the state, not by the individual farmers. It is a whole different animal over there. 

The individual farms are not even being certified as our farms 

here are as a separate farming operation where their procedures 

are very intimately reviewed and scrutinized. Instead, because of 

the cumbersome mechanism, it is so expensive to certify farms over 

there, like a couple thousand dollars that most of these very small 

agricultural producers are certified under a group or an umbrella 

certification through the exporters. So it is a bastardization of the 

entire system that organic consumers in this country are willing to 

pay a premium for. 

I think you used the term Orwellian? Was that you, Representative? 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Yes. 

Mr. KASTEL. This is Orwellian that families are seeking a safer 

and more nutritious food supply that they trust and it is coming 

from this low level of oversight. And you asked about the competition that we face. Our farmers, our entrepreneurs, our processors, 

our high-integrity businesses are facing this unfair, uneven playing 

field because we go through—we jump through these hoops. It is 

expensive. We have to document everything we are doing on farms 

and processing plants. That is not happening in China. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. I want to say one thing. I actually toured a catfish farm in China and I had the PLA there very close to me. It 

was owned by—people don’t realize it, but the military actually 

48

owns a lot of the industries over there. And it was alarming to me 

to the degree which they controlled it and we were given limited 

access. I can just say though I am puzzled, why do you think you 

are not—well two questions, excuse me, Mr. Chairman, if I go over 

a little bit. But should we block all imports of food until we get access? And two, why do you think that the national media is not 

picking up on this? It is alarming that they are not. 

Mr. KASTEL. Sure. First of all, I think as a food consumer, as I 

think we all are, I would like to see Congress demand of our regulators that imported foods meet the same high standards, the same 

level of inspections. Just because it is coming in on a container, 

why should there be less oversight? If we can afford to do it, they 

can afford to do it in other countries, either through a creditable 

inspection service with which we recognize reciprocity which 

doesn’t exist in China or by our own inspectors. But short of that, 

do you want to entrust your children, your grandchildren’s health 

and future and well being to some economic interest? 

Again, this has been referenced more than just by my testimony. 

We have endemic levels of commercial fraud in that country, superseding just the food industry. Why should we trust somebody who 

has robbed us 20 times that they are going to operate in an ethical 

manner going forward? Trust and verify. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Thank you. 

Ms. LOVERA. Just on the topic, I mean one issue that we deal 

with as a consumer advocacy group is a little bit of almost fatigue 

on food safety news and I think that is part of what is happening. 

But to your question about whether to let these products in or not, 

we are now very dependent on certain things. One country, like 

China, is producing 80 percent of the world’s Vitamin C and you 

shut them down, products won’t get made, right? So that is one factor in this as a reluctance to not have some of the products made. 

I mean one very specific example we are dealing with right now 

is the FDA has been tracking for several years reports of illness in 

mostly dogs, and it seems to be tied to a specific type of treats 

made of chicken. They are like chicken jerky treats. And they are 

sourced from China. They can’t quite figure out the problem and 

this has been going on for years. It will get occasional local media, 

people will cover it as a local story, this tragic thing happened to 

a local pet owner, but it hasn’t really risen to this thing that has 

been going on for several years. There is a China connection and 

at several points last year when FDA went to plants that were 

making some of these ingredients, they were not allowed to take 

samples. They could take samples, but they couldn’t send the samples to labs in the U.S. to do the testing, so it was a real breakdown in our regulators’ ability to figure out what is going on. 

So that gets covered almost as a local story, a very personal 

story, but there is a much bigger story there about our system not 

being able to deal with this and we are dependent on the companies doing a voluntary recall. We haven’t seen FDA block this product. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Yes, I remember when the national media got 

upset with the dog food thing. I was surprised that all the dog food 

was made in China at one place, even though you paid $10 for this 

bag, $2 for this bag came from the same shop. 

49

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my overtime use. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If we have more time and if you want more 

time for a second round, we can. We are expecting to have a vote 

very shortly. 

Let me just ask you some, as I say clean up, batting clean up 

here. You mentioned Vitamin C, 80 percent of the world’s Vitamin 

C comes from China? 

Ms. LOVERA. Yes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is there any question that some Vitamin C 

may not be up to standard? 

Ms. LOVERA. That is an assumption on our part. I can’t prove 

that to you, but I am assuming that there is some problems based 

on the track record we have seen in other sectors. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Do we know if—here it is, my multi-vitamin 

for every time I have a meal and the Vitamin C is in there. Do I 

know where that Vitamin C is coming from? 

Ms. LOVERA. No, we don’t get this level of information as consumers. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So American consumer, if some of us are concerned with the standards in China, we don’t know that we are 

consuming something from China even—and that’s not on anywhere near on the label, right? 

Ms. LOVERA. It may tell you what country it is made in as a processed food, but it’s not going to go down every ingredient. 

Mr. KASTEL. Can I add, Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Go right ahead. 

Mr. KASTEL. Besides for those supplements that you are shaking, 

that Vitamin C ascorbic acid is a very, very common food ingredient in processed food, so if you read the fine print where those 

little novels are on the side of a food package, that is in there. So 

there was some——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And it doesn’t say where it is coming from? 

Mr. KASTEL. No, it doesn’t. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It just says Vitamin C is in there, fine, but 

I personally go out of my way to try to not buy products in China 

because I have concluded, that is one of the reasons we are holding 

this hearing is because the chairman has concluded that there are 

some major questions that need to be answered and some challenges that need to be met before we can trust our putting things 

into our body or into our family’s body that might be harmful. 

Mr. KASTEL. Industry has fought like hell against country of origin labeling, COO. We would really encourage this body and all 

Members of Congress to defend the rights of the American public 

to make informed choices in the marketplace. Not only do I not 

want to buy Chinese food in my household, I want to reward the 

businesses in the United States that employ people at fair wages, 

that meet pollution and other regulatory standards, that meet 

other labor standards. And I can’t do that in most of the food I buy 

because the processed food, as Patty was stating, is not required 

to label. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I actually shop a lot for my family. I like to 

shop. And I know I am going to shock everybody here, but I really 

like to go to the 99 cent store, okay? So I go to the 99 cent store 

and you have all of these labels that are sounding so American, I 

50

mean Honey Hill and Aunt Martha’s this and all of these things 

that sound just sound so down home American and then you look 

real close and the little tiny print it says China on it. 

Mr. KASTEL. It is even worse than that, you have brands like 

Chicago Pneumatic that makes tools. They are from China. Maybe 

there is a town called Chicago in one of the provinces there, but 

I don’t think so. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Or as the one that used to be, they changed 

the name of a city in China to USA so they can print on it made 

in USA. Hm. Well, we are up against what I consider to be a very, 

how do we say, an adversary that is seeking benefit in a way that 

will put our children and our families at risk and we need to make 

sure that—and there are people in our country, of course, who are 

making a profit by dealing with those who are putting us at risk. 

And I think that we need to make sure that number one, labeling 

means something. 

I will give you one example. In my area, there is a gentleman 

who runs a paint and coating company and he used to sell all the 

paint for Mattel dolls. Now I happen to have two daughters who 

are 9 years old and I know what little kids do with dolls. They kiss 

little dolls and when the Chinese bought Mattel or bought the 

rights or Mattel decided to contract with the Chinese, the Chinese 

came to this company and he described how he had to make sure 

he had the right kind of paint that would not be at all risky to the 

health of the consumer. And sure enough, they decided to go forward with their own formula and Mattel dolls after about a year 

were found to have lead paint. And so you have all these little children kissing their doll, thinking and with Americans having trusted Mattel, a very trusted label and not to do something like that, 

but those children were being put at risk because Mattel had decided to manufacture in China. 

By the way, that situation was cleared up, only because it took 

a huge fight and it took a great amount of spotlighting the issue 

for that to happen. I think this has been a very good hearing. Do 

either of you have another question you would like to throw up? 

I think we could have a second round. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say something 

quick. I think we on this panel probably have both conservatives 

and liberals and are in general agreement. And I think that is an 

unusual circumstance where we have this concern from both sides 

of the aisle and both different philosophies. I just again can’t stress 

enough, I think somehow your organizations need to announce that 

this hearing occurred, and the things that you said and with us 

also stating that maybe we will generate some interest. This is a 

very serious issue. And it is alarming that everything that we read 

now on the labels, in fact, may not be true. And that is what we 

rely on, those labels. So again, thank you for the hearing, Mr. 

Chairman 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I will end it with this, obviously from what 

we have heard today, the American people are facing a threat, a 

major threat to their well being. Their health, the health of their 

families could be in great jeopardy and this could be—and they 

could be put in jeopardy. They may be put in jeopardy by number 

one, unscrupulous people who are making money dealing with peoVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:43 Jun 11, 2013 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_EEET\050813\80800 HFA PsN: SHIRL
51

ple in China who are not doing anything up to the standard that 

we expect here in the United States of America. 

Mr. KASTEL. And if I can interrupt to add one more thing, Mr. 

Chairman? Taking off from what you are saying because you are 

spot on. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Go right ahead. 

Mr. KASTEL. I think we need to hold the businesses in this country that are doing the importing responsible as well because they 

are again part of this dynamic that places really responsible food 

producers in the United States at a competitive disadvantage. I use 

one example, Eden Foods in Clinton, Michigan. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Say that again? 

Mr. KASTEL. Eden Foods in Clinton, Michigan, you asked about 

Walmart organics, the canned beans at Walmart whether they are 

pinto beans or black beans, they come from China. Eden Foods 

buys not from some broker with a piece of paper, but from farmers 

that they have dealt with for generations in North America, mostly 

in Michigan, but some in the Plains States and Canada. They know 

the farmers. They are a little bit more expensive, but they are operating in a very high, ethical level. We need to protect those kind 

of investors and entrepreneurs and that means that we need to 

hold responsible for everybody in the supply chain. 

If somebody comes in from China at 30 percent cheaper, we need 

to find out why and those businesses need to do their due diligence. 

And if they can’t inspect, if they are not allowed to go to that factory or those farms, they shouldn’t be doing business there. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, step one seems to be for us all to agree, 

Republican and Democrat, that we believe the consumer has a 

right to know what they are buying and has a right to know what 

country of origin they are coming from because consumers may or 

may not want to deal with—even if it was not healthy, maybe they 

want to deal with slave labor for countries that don’t permit unions 

or don’t permit their workers to earn a decent living. And maybe 

there are people who are nationalistic and just want to buy from 

the United States of America, from fellow Americans. That’s fine, 

too. Maybe they are willing to buy a little bit more or pay a little 

bit more. 

So we can all agree that we, as Americans, have a right to make 

the decisions in our lives based on a free flow of information and 

accurate information and that right now that is not happening. 

And in fact, the fact that we have got threatening foods coming in 

that could do harm to our families suggest to us that the American 

people are being betrayed by a compromise of standards and someone is making a lot of money at it. I certainly believe that we 

should be holding the corporate interests, the individuals and the 

corporations that are pushing for this and bringing food over that 

may or may not be safe. 

And by the way, they are the same ones, when we start talking 

about labeling, you can bet that these are the folks who have been 

fighting it behind the scenes the whole time. It is like and I always 

complain about the companies that go over to China and then the 

corporate leaders say well, it is not our job to watch out for the security of the United States. That is your job. You pass the laws and 

we will have to obey them. Until then, we want to invest wherever 

52

we want for the benefit of our company, except they don’t add that 

their company then spends a lot of money on lobbying to make sure 

that we don’t pass any laws that prevent them from doing business 

with a dictatorship that is the world’s worst human rights abuser 

in the world. 

So we have got our work cut out for us. This is a very good start 

in the discussion and I do plan to hold another hearing on this 

some time in the near future. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. Mr. Chairman. I have a request, if possible, 

could we bring the officials from the Silk Company before the committee? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We can ask anybody to come here that we 

would like. 

Mr. STOCKMAN. I would like to put Mark and them on the same 

panel. 

Mr. TRIPLETT. Mr. Chairman, one last thing to pick up on the 

distinguished gentleman’s point. We have the names of products 

and we know people are making a lot of profits. That is exactly 

what you said. But we don’t have the names of who those people 

are. If, God forbid, we should have a disaster here, stopping all 

trade is all we have. We don’t know who the corrupt officials are. 

We don’t know yet who the people are who are engaged in this. 

And to the extent that we can gain some information from the administration, task the administration to find the names, that is 

useful. 

I think the Congress did a very good job of naming some Russian 

officials, you remember, very recently. This is legislation you all 

did. And it caused a big impact in Russia. You can cause a really 

big impact in China if you named names or threatened to do so. 

And that would mean oh gee, I can’t go to the United States. I can’t 

visit my money and I can’t send my kid to college, all of this kind 

of thing in the United States. If you begin with the basic data of 

who the perpetrators are, I think that would be a very useful thing 

for the committee to do, based on the Russian experience. Thank 

you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, transparency and accountability are 

two essential ingredients if we are going to have freedom and be 

able to have decent lives and have any security in our lives at all 

with freedom. Freedom means that you are going to have some 

choices. Freedom means there is going to be people doing things 

that you are not totally in control of, but you should be in control 

of your own decisions. So with that said, I want to thank the panelists for opening up this area of discussion. As I say, I think we will 

probably have another round of hearings on this some time in the 

months ahead, but I think we have started the national dialogue 

which is important. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:17 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(53)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

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MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD BY MS. SOPHIE RICHARDSON, CHINA

DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

[NOTE: The above report is not reprinted here in its entirety but is available in committee records or may be accessed on the Internet at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/

default/files/reports/china0611WebInsidel0l0.pdf (accessed 6/5/13).] 


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[NOTE: The above report is not reprinted here in its entirety but is available in committee records or may be accessed on the Internet at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/

default/files/reports/china0111webwcover.pdf (accessed 6/5/13).] 


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