Food Processing - February 2008 - (Page 23)

m WHERE? A $2 trillion issue The same economic factors making China the source of millions of Mattel toys – and Vietnam the world’s leading exporter of pepper – are making developing nations the source of many of our (and the world’s) food ingredients. Some 80 percent of the world’s ascorbic acid – vitamin C, used as a preservative – is now made in China. So is 40 percent of the world’s xanthan gum. China is the leading provider of seafood to the U.S. The burgeoning global economy results in the importation of foods and ingredients by 825,000 importers from 150 countries, some from developing countries without strong food-safety inspection systems. There are economic factors pushing growth in food imports, explains David Acheson, who just got a new FDA title in January: associate commissioner for foods. “(For consumers), the expectation is, ‘I don’t want to pay $5 for a head of lettuce.’ How are you going to deal with that? You import the food.” Imports of food and ingredients alone amount to 25,000 shipments every day, according to the commissioner. “Food imports grew at an average annual rate of 14 percent per year, and during the past ﬁve years, FDA-regulated food imports from China increased by more than 140 percent,” he says. Food labels must indicate the list of ingredients and where the end-product is made, but there’s no requirement to list the country of origin of the ingredients. A product made in the U.S. might contain ingredients from China, Mexico, India or South Africa. Anywhere along the way, some unscrupulous supplier or the ingredient importer might substitute a foodgrade product with a cheaper or industrial-grade version. Or worse. Imports of all sorts in 2007 totaled more than $2 trillion, or twice of the economy of Brazil, according to Michael Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services (parent of the FDA). “And we’re likely to see it grow even further because as the world continues to ﬂatten and as the global economy continues to expand, we expect we’ll see as much as three times the amount of import activity in this country by 2015 as we do now,” he told National Public Radio. Arriving through 300 ports of entry, shipments of food into the U.S. have quadrupled since 1996, when our agricultural trade balance was more than $27 billion. Today, U.S. agricultural and food exports outweighed imports by a scant $8 billion. Individual shipments of food and ingredients from China alone have grown from 82,000 in 2002 to 199,000 in 2006 and are expected to soon hit 300,000. The $64,000 question becomes: How can the U.S. government and the food industry make certain imported foods and ingredients are safe for consumers and how do they protect their brands? FEBRUARY 2008 FOOD PROCESSING • 23 WWW.FOODPROCESSING.COM http://www.foodprocessing.com

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Food Processing - February 2008 Contents Editor’s Plate NewsBites Regulatory Issues The Trends Rollout Food Biz Kids Product Spotlight Ingredients From Where? Product Development RCA Show Review Plant Operations Packaging New Supplier Products Toops Scoops

Food Processing - February 2008

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