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i agree with pan about a universal minimum wage. i think that'd have a wide range of desirable effects. one of them would be a re-regionalization of production because it would wipe out the advantage to be had by locating a production facility in a state with the most repressive labor laws and weakest regulations/enforcement, etc.
but until that happens, you have transnational flows of goods and intense downward pressure on wages and costs. the walmart approach dontcha know--cheap commodities uber alles. if they're safe too, that's nice. but cheap is a priority. and if you find a problem with that, in the upside down world of neoliberalism, then you're not with the volk. what is entailed by cheapness is not a concern. cheap is an end in itself.
as for customs inspections===back in the day i worked in logistics. a) the type of inspections that customs would do are not designed to check on product safety except insofar as (1) it might involve importing insects or other stuff that threatens the bio-balance in the states or (2) there might be problems of handing (spoilage etc.)---but that's an equipment problem and is treated as such. inspection might happen if for some reason there's a discrepency between that the bill of lading/invoices say and what's actually been shipped, but the orientation is revenue first.
it is up toi the fda to issue guidlines and/or restrictions that would snag classes of goods as they are imported---that typically works pretty well except that the guildines are by necessity reactive--so you might now have restrictions on chinese dairy products handled in certain ways, but they could only come about in RESPONSE to a problem, they do not and cannot ANTICIPATE problems.
it is unreasonable to pretend that customs can protect you from much except in this sense.
another thing i learned is that if you want to import pretty much anything, the way to do it is to have repeated shipments from the same place on a regular basis--you might get inspected at first, but as the pattern take shape, your chances of getting inspected start to tend toward zero, especially if you're shipping by ocean. and this was back in the day, before the real budget cuts kicked in.
customs is apparently one of those services that republicans think are expendable until something fucks up and they aren't any more. you know, "pork"....
apparently, with the well-documented revolving door which links corporate agriculture and its regulatory agencies in the states, so is enforcement of regulation, until there's a problem. typically industry is "encouraged" to "self-police"...
yeah.
safety of industrial food production is dependent on the enforcement of regulations in the countries of origin.
that is assured by the presence of the correct paperwork upon arrival in the states.
generally, the system works more than it doesn't, but it's not a terribly reassuring situation when you think about it.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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