Kerala - Kochi   

No compromise on quality of imported products: U.S.

KOCHI: The United States has reached agreements with many countries on the import of high-risk products, Michael O. Leavitt, U.S. Health Secretary, has said.

Mr. Leavitt was talking to reporters after visiting the unit of AVT McCormick at Vazhakulam near here on Wednesday. “Only those products that are registered and certified as meeting our standards will be permitted to be sold in the U.S.,” he said. But he was categorical that this applies solely to high-risk products.

“We want to make it very easy for people who have products that meet our standards of quality and safety to enter the U.S. Likewise, we want to be very hard with those, whose products do not meet those standards. We desire our system to be transparent. People should know that we will avoid products, which are unsafe and that will be the biggest punishment to those who produce such products,” Mr. Leavitt said.

He said that imports to the U.S. increased dramatically over the years.

“We import products, including food products, worth $ 2 trillion every year. They come from 8,00,000 different vendors (across the globe) to 300 different ports in the U.S.,” he said.

Mr. Leavitt, who earlier visited the Kolencherry-based industrial chemical plant of Synthite, said that universalisation of quality standards was necessary if the globalised economy was to get over the present problems on the health front.

He pointed out that consumers were becoming more and more quality conscious and there was an urgent need to have a foolproof system so that the supply chain, manufacturing sector, retailers and the end users adhered to the standards to evolve a better product.

Giving an instance in a lighter vein, he said that the ingredients of a cake mix bought off the shelves in the U.S. were sourced from a variety of points across the globe.

But there was a need to invent ‘tools’ and to have a system whereby the manufacturer was able to track the origins and details of the raw materials sourced for production.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Seminar on cancer
Suresh Gopi to open fete
Gopi Kottamurickal re-elected secretary
Norms to be issued on celebration of national days
No compromise on quality of imported products: U.S.
Stage set for offshore sailing race
VFPCK plans expansion of seed processing unit
CPI(M) still people’s party, says Pinarayi
Quarries in district return to work
Kochi Today

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu