Report: Skyrocketing Fruit and Vegetable Imports May Put Americans At Risk
January 5, 2009 Americans are consuming more imported fresh fruit, fresh vegetable, canned and frozen produce and fruit juice than ever before, but a new law exempts much imported produce from having to be labeled with its country of origin.
According to a new study by consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch, imports made up twice as much of the fresh fruit and fresh vegetables that Americans ate in 2007 as in 1993. The share of imported processed produce Americans ate tripled and the share of imported fruit juice consumers drank increased by nearly two-thirds between 1993 and 2007.
The report, “The Poisoned Fruit of American Trade Policy: Produce Imports Overwhelm American Farmers and Consumers,” examined 50 commonly eaten and cultivated fruit and vegetable products, such as fresh apples, frozen broccoli, and orange juice. Most Americans are unaware that nearly half of fruit juice (49.5%), about a fifth of fresh vegetables (23.9%) and fresh fruit (22.3%), and nearly a sixth of processed produce (15.9%) were imported in 2007. Country-of-origin labeling is now required for fresh fruit and vegetables but not most processed produce like frozen vegetable mixes or bagged salad mixes. Consumers will remain oblivious that 42% of the processed mushrooms eaten in America were from China, 20% of canned olives were from Spain, and 11% of the canned peaches and 8% of the canned pears are from China in 2007.
“Americans are eating a significant and growing volume of imported produce, much of which will not bear country-of-origin labels,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “The loopholes for processed food in the new country-of-origin labeling requirements will continue to allow more than 6 billion pounds of imported processed produce onto store shelves without COOL labels.”
Imported produce enters the country with almost no oversight by the Food and Drug Administration. According to the General Accountability Office, between 2002 and 2007, FDA border inspectors examined only one in 134 shipments of produce imports, less than one percent.
“The United States imported a total of 40 billion pounds of produce in 2007, but FDA has been asleep at the switch in the face of these surging imports,” noted Hauter. “The free trade deals like NAFTA have unleashed a flood of nearly uninspected fruit and vegetable imports onto U.S. supermarket shelves.”
On average, each American consumed 31 pounds of imported fresh vegetables, 24 pounds of imported produce, 20 pounds of imported fresh fruit and 3 gallons of imported juice in 2007. Fresh fruit and fresh vegetable imports grew by two and a half times between 1993 and 2007. Fresh fruit imports rose from 2.4 billion pounds in 1993 to 6.0 billion pounds in 2007. Fresh vegetable imports grew from 3.7 billion pounds to 9.3 billion pounds over the same period, and processed (frozen and canned) produce imports tripled from 2.2 billion pounds to 7.3 billion pounds.
To read the report on the Web, go to: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/pubs/reports/the-poisoned-fruit-of-american-trade-policy.
Subscribe Today For
