I am convinced that every country with a functioning government and a capital market has its own version of the food and drug safety scandal.   The capital market requirement is important because the machinations of tightly run, centrally planned economies tend to create bigger problems – like food and medicine shortages – which shove safety issues to the back burner of the public consciousness.  Moreover, as counter-intuitive as this might sound, it doesn’t make sense to make counterfeit drugs in a market just because their is a shortage of medicine; a necessary condition is the existence of capital amongst individuals and in the private sector, which is a problem when the government hoards all funds.   There’s also that whole control of media thing, which precludes the reporting of food and drug scandals all together.  Failed states/countries don’t have internal food and drug safety scandals for obvious reasons, but, crucially, this does not mean that they can’t be the the victims of a food and drug safety scandal that originated elsewhere.

That’s because today, no one in the world is immune to the effects of an exported food and drug safety scandal.  When Country A exports melons, tainted with a nasty human pathogen because Country A’s Food and Drug Safety Commission failed make the necessary inspections, for whatever reasons, Country B’s through Country M’s citizens become at risk of getting sick, or worse.

The importing countries fate is determined partly by the strength of their own Food and Drug Safety apparatus and partly by luck.  Food and drug safety is not an exact science, but one thing is for sure, in today’s economy – where, if I am so inclined, I can order an overnight shipment of Malaysian citrus to Ann Arbor, from a Malaysian citrus farm, even though at the time of my order my selected citrus is still hanging off a tree – one country’s Food and Drug Safety scandal can quickly become a global food and drug safety problem.

On some level, most people with access to international news are increasingly becoming aware of this dynamic, with China in the role of Country A.   The problem is that by the time the news cycle is finished covering one of China’s food and safety scandals, the average consumer of news is ill informed about the story layer which has to do with her own well being.

More often than not, international news stories about China’s food and drug safety issues are reported in a way that scores  points for economies doing trade with China , and, in the worst cases, China’s food and safety problems are unceremoniously grouped in with to a long list of China’s human rights issues.  It is the classic case of elites writing for other elites.  The politically and economically expedient information is seized upon while the truly important aspect of it is let go by the wayside.

China’s baby formula melamine scandal and its various precursors (for contaminated toothpaste, see here, and for Diethylene Glycol poisoning scandals which have received less media attention but were probably responsible for more deaths worldwide, see here) did not make front page news across the world because of the many intertwined story lines of captivating political intrigue and corruption, but because, all across the world, products in every day use were now in danger of really hurting people.  Billions of people, and millions of household pets, were are risk of being adversely affected. 

The  corruption and structural frailty of China’s SFDA which led to the global poisonings was certainly put on display for all to see, and the potential economic impact on China and certain domestic industries was worthy of coverage, but the sexiness of those news angles obscured the fact that the story’s usefulness for the majority of people was contingent upon it remaining healthcare story.

While sensationalizing China’s food and safety can be justified, in some instances,  like when international pressure is put on China’s regulators to crack down on certain offenders,  too often the issue is myopically focused down on just China’s SFDA. From the Americas to Japan, various countries’ FDAs, too, are part of the regulatory mechanism that help protect consumers from dangerous products, and they certainly aren’t the only link.  There are also the middle men, the merchants who buy chemicals from Chinese manufacturers, the traders who package and ship the chemicals, and the industrialists who unwrap the packages and use their contents to make products that end up in private households.  It’s never just one person or group.  Catching manufacturers who substitute product with poison requires a global effort, otherwise the trail quickly goes cold.

A more politically savvy strategy requires planning, not reacting.

First, heavy handed criticism should be saved for private exchanges with China’s SFDA , while public coverage should involve more measured  criticism, with a focus on the public health ramifications for the populace.

There is no need for overly humiliating public criticism from leaders because, in recent years, the Chinese have proven more than willing to hold their food and drug safety officials accountable, executing Zheng Xiaoyu, the SDA/SFDA chief from 1998-2005, in 2007.  The PRC government, too, is aware that creating a reliable Food and Drug Safety Administration is crucial if China is to transition from a factory economy to one that can thrive in hi-tech sectors like drug development and medical devices.  The incentives for reform are already there, and if the endless restructuring of its SFDA (2003, 2008) is any indication, China seems to be working on it.

Second, leadership should publicly embrace food safety as a global issue.  Public leaders should demand higher merchant accountability standards of all merchants dealing in food and safety products, and look at the way their FDA reviews products from China, as well as the practices of  other countries that use chemicals and food stuffs from China.   Politically, there is nothing to lose domestically; both Democrats and Republicans love to rally around China.

Third, the FDA should do everything it can to integrate its operations with China’s SFDA.  I don’t know what form this cooperation would take, but a good place to start is coming up with a mutally agreed upon system of tracking and labeling. No package enters or exits either country unless the origin of the product is clear, and all intermediate transactions are detailed, in full. At the very least, closer oversight by the US might speed the pace of reforms up.  Then again, it might not, but it’s still worth a shot.

To be sure, some of this is already taking place and most of it is easier said than done.  Per the former, America’s FDA recently opened up its first office, in Beijing.  Per the latter, China Daily reports today might spark a whole new food safety scandal;

Every year, two to three million tons of swill-cooked dirty oil, soaked with poisonous carcinogens have sneaked back to our dining tables through an underground muck-money network so rampant that it’s an open secret in the industry, the China Youth Daily reported Wednesday.

A deadly toxin found in swill-oil is aflatoxin, which is among the most carcinogenic substances ever known and is 100 times more poisonous than the forbidding white arsenic.

The stomach-turning news report quoted a veteran food professor as saying “about one in ten meals” at the country’s restaurants is cooked with such dirty oil, a calculation based on China’s annual oil consumption of 22.5 million tons.

But, the takeaway is that food and drug safety is an issue that requires advocacy on a global scale.  The market in dangerous, fake drugs and chemicals is growing exponentially, and barring any catastrophic demographic changes, international trade in foodstuffs will only continue to grow, as well.  Small problems now will not be hammered out by the market.  With seven plus billion people in the world, the market for cheap, dirty goods will always exist, because pockets of poverty will, most likely, always exist.

The task ahead is to recognize the need for constant vigilance, which, in turn, necessitates constant global cooperation.  People define Global Health in a lot of ways, but maybe the easiest way to think about it is that the first victim of globalization is our health.  This is easy enough to understand when SARS or other seasonal villains like the avian/swine flues are involved, but we tend to forget it when the health threat is integrated within the organs of our economy.

Two days after a coughing, poisoned butterfly on the floor of black market chemicals manufacturer coughs, in China, the emergency room in Anytown, USA runs out of beds.