Europe operates by what is called the precautionary principle, which says that if you have enough evidence to show that a product is probably doing harm, it behooves us to take that product off the market and do more studies before we bring it back on.

Europe has established a program called REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals), and over the next 10 years, 30,000 chemicals will undergo safety testing. Guess who’s paying for it? Not the taxpayer, the chemical companies. In this country, we are light years behind Europe in terms of public policy. We know that certain agents damage the immune system, but we keep saying, “We need more studies to prove it.” Until it’s harmed enough people like tobacco, we’re just not going to do anything about it.

Wow! That’s pretty astounding! Government looking out for people . . . really! When the big brouhaha emerged here from accumulated accounts of dangerous products, OUR government told us (1) it didn’t have enough money to set up labs in the all the foreign countries where our corporations do business, and (2) some countries would not permit access by our regulators to inspect their businesses. What?

Why should we have to inspect foreign suppliers? Why should we have to parlay with foreign governments to establish U.S. regulatory satellites within their countries? We HAVE overseers. Let them do their jobs HERE! And let the responsibility for safe products rest where it should—with the corporations who seek every advantage and decry every regulation that encroaches on their interpretation of “free markets.” OUR governmental agencies should be empowered not only to oversee (inspect) imported products, but to penalize those who ignore our laws. U.S. corporations who, for financial reasons alone, seek the lowest prices in the world should be held accountable for all harm done when their corporate decisions harm U.S. citizens. I’m not talking penalties that corporations consider “costs of doing business” and pass along to consumers by raising prices. I’m talking about the serious penalties like “three strikes and you’re out” and/or “he who makes the decisions stands proxy for the corporation.”

We hear so much talk about free markets . . . but the free markets that are desired by corporations ensure only their continued profitability. That profitability seems to be unevenly dispensed to executives and directors at the top of the corporate heap, with sufficient distributions to satisfy shareholders. Employees and consumers have become merely labor units and consumer units, voiceless and powerless—not so different from exploited workers in Third World countries who provide cheap labor and cheap goods to U.S. corporations.