COVID Panic over Cushy Tushy Paper

"Found some toilet paper in the wild! Driving it home now."
"This is as close as I'll ever come to knowing what it feels like driving one of those armoured money trucks."
A bit of Twitter fun from @TransForYang

Rolling, rolling, rolling: A Procter & Gamble manufacturing facility. David Salpeter

Things have been so tense in North America with wild panic setting in over the possibility of consumers unable to access toilet paper that the Twitterer might even have experienced how nasty it can be when an armoured truck is held up, its driver held at attention with the barrel of a revolver held to his head while a voice emanating from a face mask snaps at  him, report this to the authorities and I'll neutralize you, while making off with his cushy tushy paper.

Supermarkets in North America and no doubt elsewhere sported shelves empty of cleaning products, refrigerated units void of meat, shortages of eggs, but it was the sight of empty shelves where shoppers knew toilet paper should be stacked that really set civilization aflame. Consumers of toilet paper had a mission: find out where the toilet paper is being shipped to, get there first, and grab it -- all of it -- before anyone else can get their greasy hands on it!

Hmm, toilet paper. Those big double, soft, three-ply, embossed stacked rolls take up a whole lot of room. So supermarkets, unwilling to take up precious stock room with it, order and shelve only what is estimated to sell during a certain period of time. How would they know there'd be a run on toilet paper? It's as though people had become so irritably nervous over the very thought of the threat hanging over the world at a time of SARS-CoV-2, their bowels continually ran.

Meticulously cleaning up the ensuring - er - mess, takes lots, scads of toilet paper. Evidently. Consumer products data tracker NCSolutions issued updates on the pathetic lack of toilet paper and data for re-stocking shelves. 73 percent of U.S.grocery stores came up perilously slack on re-stocking sending consumers into a blizzard of failing confidence in the market. One mightn't think that a 27 percent increase in demand over the same period a year earlier would produce such terror.

Consisting on average of 2.6 people, U.S. households use roughly 409 rolls annually. This, according to the producer of Angel Soft and Quilted Northern, Georgia Pacific. Remaining home 24/7 under lockdown would boost that average usage by 40 percent -- imagine! Increasing the need to purchase said rolls to the rate of 9 doubles in about two weeks.

Toilet paper was in the exalted company of other shortage items such as pasta, soap, flour, yeast and canned goods, all of which swiftly vacated store shelves and became unavailable to other citizens equally entitled to share the riches of civilized living but hadn't had the speedy wit to begin stockpiling as their more savvy-selfish neighbours had.

It's a clear bet that Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Georgia Pacific never in their wildest industrial dreams imagined that they might ever represent the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in popular appeal during a global pandemic.

A shelf at a Kroger-owned Ralphs store is stocked with toilet paper in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2020. Picture taken April 25, 2020. REUTERS/Lisa Baertlein

Cornering the World Market

"China did not corner the world rare earths market by accident. 'The Middle East has oil. China has rare earth', said Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1992, in recognition fhat rare earths are commodities strategic in both military and economic planning. At the Chinese government's direction, domestic state-owned firms, unrestrained by environmental niceties, then set about churning the Chinese landscape, while Chinese multinationals such as CNOOC, money being no object, scoured the world buying out rare earths producers abroad whenever foreign governments let them. In one attempt during the George Bush administration, CNOOC tried but failed to obtain Molycorp's mine."
Lawrence Solomon, policy director, Probe International, Toronto

Not Rare, but PreciousThough rare-earth minerals, comprised of 17 elements on the periodic table are called rare, they are actually common. But they are scattered in small amounts within soil such as that pictured here, at a port in Jiangsu Province, China. That makes mining rare-earth minerals costly and environmentally taxing.Photograph from Imaginechina/Corbis

Sounds exotic, doesn't it, the descriptive of 'rare earth'. What it describes is minerals that exist in minuscule quantities in soil. They may be dispersed widely around the world, but finding them in their excruciatingly small quantities is what makes them 'rare'. They are, however, of immense importance in today's world of technological advances.

Representing minerals with strange names like scandium, yttrium, lanthanum and many others reflecting 17 little-known chemical elements, but vital to manufacturers of cellphones, computers, TVs and a range of electronic products such as laser-guided missiles, fighter jet catapults launched from aircraft carriers, including the F-35 fighter jet beloved of the Pentagon.

A worker displays samples of rubidium, iron, and boron at a workshop in Ganzhou City. China used to export almost all its rare-earth metals, but increasingly needs more of it for its own industrial uses. That is one of the reasons the Chinese government says it is restricting exports now.Photograph by Zhou Ke, Xinhua Press/Corbis

They are, in other words, indispensable to the manufacture of products of everyday use and those meant for the military.

The United States had its home-grown supplier of rare earth minerals. This was Molycorp, which established its search for these products in the Mojave Desert, until its 2015 bankruptcy. Remember the recession of 2008 when the U.S. government was quick to bail out U.S. auto manufacturers? It made no such move on behalf of its sole producer of rare earth elements.

The backstory is that the Obama administration appealed to the World Trade Organization because Apple and similar other companies complained  about the China-dominated market jacking up prices. China responded to the WTO appeal by increasing its export of rare earths and in the process reducing their price to an extent that Molycorp could not match and still remain in business, leading to its bankruptcy.

Which led to the situation that high-tech manufacturers worldwide have few options but to buy from China. There are no competitors. So the United States, for one, with its powerful manufacturing base of advanced technical products is utterly dependent on China's rare earth exports; this means by extension that America's military markets depend on China to enable their manufacturing of rare earth-dependent products.

The new American administration under President Donald Trump harrumphs about jobs being lost in the United States, and of course China is a signal source of those lost manufacturing jobs. Molycorp employed 500 people, not a huge number of employees, but significant for what they produced and the assurance they granted to American manufacturers that rare earth products were to be reliably domestically sourced.

When combined with magnetic metals such as iron, rare-earth minerals create super-strong permanent magnets that are impossible to move with one's bare hands. A little rare-earth metal goes a long way. The strength of these rare-earth-enhanced magnets have helped to miniaturize electronics and to reduce weight in electric cars. Here, samples of rare-earth compounds are displayed in a showroom at Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company, China's largest rare-earths producer.Photograph by Nelson Ching, Bloomberg/Getty Images

As an interesting example, in a territorial dispute with Japan resulting from the Japanese navy detaining a Chinese fishing boat for playing their trade in Japanese waters, China stopped sales of rare earths to Japan. That incident caused prices to soar 4,000 percent worldwide, and of course left Japan temporarily without that critical manufacturing resource.

Similarly in 1994 China acquired U.S.-based Magnequench, established by General Motors to highlight its invention of the rare-earth-based neodymium-iron-boron magnet. The U.S. stipulated as a condition of the sale of such a strategic business, that the business remain operational for five years within the United States. As soon as that period elapsed, the U.S. operation was shuttered and China relocated the processes and the intellectual property to monopolize the market, to China.

Perhaps because Donald J. Trump comes from the cutthroat world of business enterprise, he is a step ahead of the Chinese penchant to highjack from willing enough dupes critical infrastructure and manufacturing along with the research enabling it, in a more cautious way than his predecessors. When Presidents Trump and Xi met this week in Washington there was doubtless much to discuss beyond the wild card of North Korea's maniacal Kim Jong-un.

The U.S. Department of Energy says that deployment of clean energy technology could be slowed in the coming years by supply challenges for at least five rare-earth metals. Here, a worker pours the rare-earth metal lanthanum, which is used in camera lenses and other types of glass, into a mold at a smelting workshop in Inner Mongolia. Photograph by David Gray, Reuters

A Cautionary Recommendation

"I went into the bathroom, I grabbed my Johnson's Baby Powder and threw it in the wastebasket."
"I said, 'What else could it be?' [the cause of her diagnosis of ovarian cancer]."
"I knew nothing about this before. I figured baby powder is for babies, it must be safe."
Deane Berg, 59, physician assistant, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

"There is no way we're ever going to know for certain that any exposure is necessarily causal to a disease."
"The best we can do, is look at the preponderance of the evidence."
Dr. Shelley Tworoger, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University

Matt Rourke/AP Photo file  The suits follow a jury decision in Missouri that awarded US$72 million to the family of a woman who died of ovarian cancer after using Johnson & Johnson feminine hygiene products for years that contained its talcum powder.

"The talc in our baby powder has a long history of safe and gentle use."
"After 30 years of studies by medical experts around the world, science, research and clinical evidence continues to support the safety of cosmetic talc …. We continue to believe in the safety of Johnson’s baby powder containing talc."
Johnson & Johnson

"The evidence is real clear that Johnson & Johnson has known about the dangers associated with talcum powder for over 30 years."
"Instead of giving a warning, what they did was targeted the groups most at risk for developing ovarian cancer [overweight women, black and Latino]."
Jim Onder, attorney for plaintiffs

And the evidence is there that there does exist the need for cautionary advice to women, not to use talcum powder for their intimate bodily cavities, and nor should it, in actual fact, be used for what Johnson & Johnson markets it primarily for: dusting over a baby's body or diapers. Talc, a clay mineral whose composition is an amalgam of magnesium and silicon is often mined close to where asbestos exists, and asbestos most certainly is a known carcinogen.

Some of the properties of talc are very similar to those of asbestos, a fact not unknown to the supplier who provides Johnson & Johnson with its talc and who has added warning labels about the possible consequences of its use, whereas Johnson & Johnson saw no need to. The use of talc powder on babies is strongly discouraged by pediatricians who are concerned that babies can become ill or even die after breathing in the particles. Talc's reputation is such that condom and surgical glove makers no longer dust their products with it.

Ten years ago Deane Berg, then 49, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a type of cancer that is often deadly, albeit relatively rare. She knew that the usual risk factors for ovarian cancer did not apply to her. She went on line to see if she could discover anything that might point her in the direction of the cause. And there she found that warning; websites that listed talc as a possible source of ovarian cancer. And she had dusted baby powder every day for 30 years between her legs.

The research is certainly there, and it dates back to 1971 when Welsh scientists discovered talc particles embedded in ovarian and cervical tumours. Among African-American women, genital use of baby powder has been linked with a 44 percent increase in the risk of invasive epithelial ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson insists its baby powder is safe. It is so certain that it plans to appeal two multimillion-dollar jury awards.

Thousands of women whose use of talc has led to dire health threats and in some instances, death, followed in the sake of Deane Berg, to sue Johnson & Johnson. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified talcum powder as a possible human carcinogen when used in the female genital area ten years ago. In 1982, 215 women with ovarian cancer and 215 healthy women were compared in a study by Harvard's Dr. Daniel Cramer and colleagues.

It was concluded that women using talcum power were at twice the risk of ovarian cancer compared with non-users. Women who used talc on a regular basis on their genitals and sanitary pads saw their risk rise to over three times the relative risk. Since the mark of a successful conclusion to research is its repeatability, that research was  verified by ten subsequent studies, as opposed to a handful that found no heightened risk for women using talc.

Pooling the results of such studies involving almost twenty thousand women, researchers found talc use to be associated with a 24 percent increase in risk for ovarian cancer, an often fatal disease. Johnson & Johnson, however, holds fast to their own research and the expert advice of Dr. Larry Copeland, an Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center oncologist on contract with Johnson & Johnson.

Dr. Copeland is reliant on a government-funded study, the Women's Health Initiative. In that study over sixty-one-thousand women were asked by researchers if they had used perineal powder. Their health was followed for the next dozen years. And the study established the finding that there appeared to be no relationship between the use of the talc and cancer onset.

Scientists can always be found to refute what other researchers find, and this case is no different.

Dr. Steven A. Narod from Toronto, and an expert in cancer genetics was of the opinion that the study's cohort was insufficiently large, and the women were not tracked for a long enough period of time. Furthermore, as far as he was concerned, the findings did not render the earlier observational research invalid in its conclusion that a link existed between talc and cancer.

Buyer Beware of Non-Safe Cosmetic Compounds

"It's really important for consumers to be aware that [cosmetics] products are not tested by Health Canada prior to being put on the shelves."
"Health Canada has to provide that information [substances contained in cosmetics] to you and it's frequently not available."
"For the most part, I'm personally not worried about walking through the department store [fragrance section] and I've got makeup on and I'm using shampoo."
"If I have a health and safety incident -- which I have had in the past with a makeup product -- I would now know that I should call Health Canada, because there is not mandatory reporting. Nobody else will tell Health Canada except, potentially the consumer [to report issues]."
Julie Gelfand, federal environment commissioner, Ottawa

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld    Julie Gelfand, Canada's commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, addresses a news conference in Ottawa

"Health Canada should inform consumers that it does not regularly test cosmetic products for prohibited and restricted substances, microbial contamination, and heavy metals." report – Chemicals in Consumer Products and Cosmetics

 

Ms. Gelfand issued her report in the wake of a new audit conducted by her environment commission, concluding that millions of Canadian consumers have no basic information on which to rely should they wish to make personal choices about the safety of cosmetic products and the ingredients contained in those commonly-used beauty products, toothpaste, creams and other items used regularly in most households.

Health Canada does list restricted and prohibited chemicals, setting rules for their use by manufacturers. That being said, the federal agency leaves it up to the cosmetics industry to exercise the requisite responsibility to honour those rules.

The health of Canadians, then, is reliant on the expectation by Health Canada that industries whose business it is to make hefty profits using production methods and substances that will enable them to do so, and as cheaply as possible, will still police themselves to favour public health.

Environment commissioner Gelfand recommends that the government work out a method whereby manufacturers will be encouraged to present to consumers complete lists of the ingredients in fragrances, flavours and aromas which are not at the present time divulged to that very public that purchases their products. There is an acknowledged and vital need for consumers to have such information to enable them to make educated choices.

Consumers have a right, as far as she is concerned, to know that what they are buying is hypo-allergenic, preservative-free, fragrance-free or unscented, in the name of health and safety. At the present time, cosmetics labelled as being free of fragrance and unscented may in actual fact be neither, but may contain in fact chemicals used for the very purpose of masking odour.

Under the Food and Drugs Act, Health Canada has no authority to order the recall of cosmetic products. However, if made aware of safety incidents through reports from the public made directly to Health Canada, it will conduct risk assessments. Where other consumer product health and safety incidents must be reported to Health Canada, cosmetic products are exempted.

The audit examined 50 cosmetic notifications discovered to contain prohibited substances during a two-year period, to find that it took about nine months for Health Canada to act. Even when it did little evidence existed of followup.

It is equally if not even more troubling that many counterfeit products on the market are not included on new product notifications. As for ordering cosmetics online, people do so at their own risk. Even legitimately reported products may not have been removed or stopped from entering the Canadian market in 48 percent of cases that were examined by the audit.

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The audit, moreover, verified that Health Canada doesn't regularly test cosmetic products to ensure the accuracy of product labels or to investigate whether any of them contain heavy metals or contaminants. Furthermore, under the current law, product ingredients labelled "parfum", "aroma", "fragrance" or "flavour" may contain chemicals concerning to human health — but under current regulations, companies aren't required to inform consumers or advise Health Canada of their presence.

"Those catch-all terms can conceal a range of potentially hazardous chemicals and this information is not readily available to consumers", Ms. Gelfand stated, adding that these substances are capable of  triggering allergies and asthma, and have also been linked to cancer. Health Canada, according to her report, does not regularly test for prohibited or restricted ingredients in cosmetics, and "cannot assure consumers that these products comply with the Food and Drugs Act and are safe."

The Hunt's The Thing

"We think price integrity goes hand-in-hand with the quality of our brand, so to actually dumb-down the product and put it in an outlet just doesn't seem right for the brand."
"We don't have clearance sales in our stores so we have to use outlets to clear aged inventory. I know that we are in the very small minority that do it this way."
Doug Wood, president, CEO, Tommy Bahama

"I don't think that is a widely known fact at all that you are getting different things that are made specifically for the outlet. Knowing that now, I would probably avoid outlet shopping in the future, because I am willing to spend more if something is of better quality, and particularly if it is ethically made."
"That said, I don't know if the average consumer would care about getting something cheaper and of slightly lower quality if they still could have the brand's label on there."
Alyssa Garrison, Random Acts of Pastel blog, Toronto

"There is no cannibalization -- it's just the opposite. We look at it as an entryway for customers to get familiar with the brand. They come in [to outlets] to get exposed to the brands, and then we want to graduate them into the full-line department stores."
"The off-price market is under-penetrated. We believe that there is so much room for growth in the sector, and we aren't even close to saturation."
Jonathan Greller, president of outlets, Hudson's Bay Co.

"There is often very little crossover between an outlet shopper and a full-price shopper. The risk is modest if you are a Saks or a Nordstrom -- those Saks customers are not shopping the outlets. And as a retailer, you are making a significantly better margin [on goods sold] at the outlet."
Anthony Karabus, CEO, retail consultancy HRC Advisory

A shopper inspects a bag at a Gap outlet. Photo: Getty Images

 

 

• Know the value of a sunk cost. Even if you’ve driven for 45 minutes or more, if you don’t see anything you like, just walk away. Now that you understand the geographic strategy, don’t throw good money after bad to justify the road trip.
• Ignore the “full price.” It’s probably fake, and the only thing that’s relevant is whether the item is worth the selling price.
• Carefully check quality. Have a hawk-eye look at construction, stitching, potential damage. Check tags for fabric content and the country of manufacture. A Consumer Reports study said that 77% of people can’t tell the difference between outlet and regular merchandise. Don’t let that be you—if you favor a designer, regularly check their full-price merchandise at the store so you are familiar with its quality and will be able to tell the difference.
• Research ahead of time. If you know you want a pair of Nike shorts, for example, check out the price online or at your local store, so you know how the outlet price compares. The savings may not be as great as you think, especially after you account for lower quality.
• Check out Consumer Reports’ rankings. Top-rated stores include Mikasa, Lenox, and L.L. Bean. (A copy is here, and Consumer Reports subscribers can access the full article at their website.)
• Beware regular retail stores. There’s no legal definition of an “outlet” in the US, so sometimes regular retail stores sneak themselves into an outlet.     From LearnVest

Most outlet enthusiasts believe, or struggle to believe, or disbelieve that they might be mistaken about the value of goods that they buy at outlet malls when they're focused on buying specific name-brands. The impression has been laid, and it persists, that factory outlets beckon as off-the-highway clearing houses for retailing items that have been left in stock from regular retailers selling quality goods. That may certainly be how the idea of outlet malls began, but it no longer is true for most of these establishments with some rare exceptions, of which the Tommy Bahama factory outlets is representative.

Present-day factory outlets give the appearance and the unspoken assurance that their stock is the very identical merchandise that regular retail stores sell. Those wonderful bargains in name-brands that people snap up and haul back home as treasures to be gloated over, as representative of a bargain-priced quality brand-name item, are usually pale replicas of the real thing. The fabric of which it's made is inferior, with fewer finishes in its manufacture or tailoring. Leaving the value-for-money in the deep-freeze.

That sense of buyer-satisfaction at out-manoeuvring name brand outlets because a shopper had the time and the inclination to seek out a factory outlet is an illusion, one held dear to the heart of the believer. Factory outlets have become places to source lower-quality, branded goods purporting to be what their full-price alternate sold at urban retailers purveying expensive brands are, but they really are not more than design impersonations, at best.

Middle-class shoppers with a definite bottom line for shopping expenses flock to factory outlets in the belief that they're getting a bargain  in upscale goods. That phenomenon has convinced HBC to open 25 Saks Off Fifth stores in Canada, the first to open in spring of 2016 in Ottawa, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Vaughan, Ontario close to Toronto. And Nordstrom plans to follow suit with its first Nordstrom Rack stores in Canada, even as "off-price" retailers like Winners and Banana Republic
Factory Stores continue to boom with high sales figures.

Photo: Getty Images

Present-day North America can boast 215 outlet malls, with another 60 outlet projects and expansions set to open in the near future. Large department stores at one time used their basements to feature out-of-season, returned, or unsaleable items at knocked-down prices. Many other retailers beginning in the 1930s set up factory outlets to enable department stores and manufacturers to rid themselves of unsold or damaged inventory. Retailers have long since used public relations and advertising to their advantage to convince people of quality and bargains available at outlet stores.

Apparel made for Gap and J. Crew's factory outlet stores are marked for the purpose of giving customers a heads-up that most don't even know about, when they are contemplating buying the lower-tier merchandise. J. Crew's factory outlet stores mark their labels with two small diamonds, while Gap factory apparel marks labels with three small dots, differentiating them however subtly, from merchandise produced for their retail outlets, as better quality.

Spot the difference: J. Crew's linen Carrie Dot dress from last summer, $148 (left) is available online at J. Crew Factory for $104.50 (right), however the outlet dress is made from cotton and features a mismatched seam -- Mail Online

Irrespective of whether shoppers are aware that they're not getting the same quality for the lower price, they still rush to the factory outlets imagining that they are. Either that, or they're content with the knowledge that often they come away with lower-end merchandise at outlets but they're still a brand product. North American middle-income people who flock to outlet stores represent a much larger buying demographic than high-income earners who tend to shop at luxury stores and high-end department stores. And since rents are higher in urban areas than at suburban outlet malls, so too are profits lower at the stores than at malls.

Profits are higher coming out of the outlets than at the brand retailers; the average outlet mall sells $546.33 worth of merchandise per square foot, as opposed to annual sales per square foot for Hudson's Bay and Home Outfitters, for example at $145, and Lord & Taylor at $212.00. Incentives in spades for manufacturers of brand merchandise to prefer outlets to regular retail stores. And in fact for some retailers there are more outlets in operation than regular stores, reflecting the disparity in profit.

The end result is the shopper, whether or not they know it, get a somewhat inferior product at a lower price, but they shop with such abandon and in such eager numbers that the outlets reap greater profits than the high-rent retail places stocking more quality products with a relatively lesser clientele. So everyone's satisfied; the manufacturer/retailers, and the shoppers who live with the delusional joy of having shopped successfully for bargain brands.

Corporate Conscience? Oxymoron

"Coca-Cola, the world's largest producers of sugary beverages, is backing a new 'science-based solution to the obesity crisis: To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories ...."
"The beverage giant has teamed up with influential scientists who are advancing this message in medical journals, at conferences and through social media. to help the scientists get the word out, Coke has provided financial and logistical support to a new non-profit organization called the Global Energy Balance Network, which promotes the argument that weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise."
The New York Times

"Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, 'Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ - blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on."
"And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause."
Steven N. Blair, exercise scientist, vice president, Global Energy Balance Network

File Photo/The Associated Press

Coca-Cola is backing a new “science-based” solution to the obesity crisis: To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories. Health experts say this message is misleading and part of an effort by Coke to deflect criticism about the role sugary drinks have played in the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

Kraft Foods, McDonald's, PepsiCo and Hershey's, along with Coca-Cola are all implicated as corporate malefactors capable of manipulating public opinion. Well, certainly people are hugely suggestible. And people love to eat, particularly food and drink that appeal to their taste buds, high in sugar, fat, salt, all of which in abundant amounts in any diet speak to excess. Moderation may be the key to the golden mean, but it isn't in most people's characters to cling to moderation.

We enjoy excess. If something seems like a good thing, tastes good, makes us feel good, we automatically think: why not more? And so, we indulge. And we super-indulge. Not just intermittently, but constantly. And manufacturers of quasi food that has been processed beyond its natural state to present as taste-pleasing products rife with sugar, fat and salt, see no reason why they have to restrain their acquisitive impulse in sales and profit.

After all, people are imbued with free will and people have the capacity to make discriminatory, intelligent choices in their lives. And as free individuals able to do as they wish when they wish, why should it be the responsibility of food processors to be concerned about health matters on the part of the public? Government agencies, on the other hand, are concerned, they're concerned about the growing menace of population obesity, because ill-health takes its toll on a health-care system.

So government-employed scientists study the issues, do their research, conduct their investigations and come to conclusions in line with government's concern; people are eating too much and too much of the wrong food. So the corporate food-processing interests are responding. They're hiring their own scientists and medical investigators to come up with academic conclusions that all would be well if only people used the energy they derive from questionable food sources, to balance intake with output.

In the annals of all's fair in public relations if it profits the bottom line, the food processing giants have taken to hiring scientists to come up with findings that match the interests of processors. Now, the question might be a standoff between ethical corruption versus personal restraint. Consider this: the president of the Global Energy Balance Network is none other than University of Colorado School of Medicine Professor James O. Hill, a past chair of the National Institute of Health Nutrition Study Section.

Reputation, global respect as a nutrition scientist and medical researcher? The man has it all. He was a member of the Expert Panel on Obesity of the National Institutes of Health, developing American guidelines for the treatment and prevention of obesity. Dr Hill is thought of as "a leader in the fight against the global obesity epidemic", celebrated by the American Society for Nutrition. He is also Director of the Center for Human Nutrition, co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry.

That this man of great repute in nutritional science has chosen employment with corporate food interests to aid them in advancing the theory that it doesn't matter what you eat or drink as long as you correspondingly exercise to match the energy consumed and thus stave off excess weight gain is breathtakingly puzzling. The simple reality being, needless to say, that sound nutritional intake itself is an imperative, one matched with a regime of bodily exercise for greatest health impact.

All else is commentary, and for the most part uninformed and untrustworthy evasion of reality.

Cheap, Unreliable Generic Drugs

"The numbers here are so large -- in terms of the facilities and types of drugs being made and ingested -- and it's just a drop in the bucket how many are getting inspected."
"And yet you look at the inspections that have occurred now, and you see dozens of warning letters over the last several years for these facilities in India."
Andrew Beato, Washington lawyer

"When we talk about generic substitution, we always talk about cost, not quality. The way that this manifests itself on the other side -- when you do not have proper regulatory oversight -- is that people try to cut corners."
Dinesh Thakur, chemical engineer, former executive Ranbaxy Laboratories

"These guys are not keeping records, are fudging records, are systematically deleting records."
"It [IPCA report] is managing to do things no company should be able to do on the production line."
Amir Attaran, health policy expert, University of Ottawa

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg   Health Canada has barred drug imports from Dr. Reddy's plant in India after a U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspection found questionable conditions.

Generic-produced drugs are less expensive variants of drugs having the same properties as those pharmaceuticals whose patent protection has expired, allowing the industry to use the formulae of the original drugs without penalty. They are quite a bit less expensive, and represent a boon to humanitarian groups working in under-developed countries who rely on them to produce the same effects as the patented and more expensive drugs.

They are also much cheaper for health insurance companies and provincial health benefit regulators in Canada and government agencies elsewhere to access, to help keep the steeply rising costs of drugs to manageable levels. But reliance on their effectiveness and sterility when they are sourced in some questionable venues means that their use can be a gamble if the generic manufacturers fail to test the effectiveness of their drugs, and fail to ensure that their manufacture is without contaminants.

Take for example Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. in India where American inspectors found that the water used to produce ingredients in part of medications produced is free of biological contamination in a country whose unsafe drinking water is notorious. Tests showed that unknown impurities were to be found in some of the drugs produced by the plant. Worse, samples had bacteria and mould whose presence appeared "TNTC": too numerous to count.

It was noted as well that factory workers' washrooms had no hot water, no soap, neither air dryers or single-service towels. After the U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspection results were made known, Health Canada barred imports from this producer. India's pharmaceutical manufacturing is a booming business where generic drugs can be sourced cheaper than the cost of their production elsewhere, however, and this is a lure.

Unfortunately, foreign regulators are discovering questionable manufacturing standards to be the norm in India, as well as manipulated records, and the manufacture of defective drugs. An industry that was once concentrated in Europe and North America, pharmaceuticals have increasingly depended on the developing world for production where lower production costs feed into the thrust for less expensive acquisition of patent-expired products in the West.

Governments and insurers have looked increasingly to achieve lower prices through generic drug production. And those generic drugs become the choice for patient prescriptions. The generic pharmaceutical industry that has developed in India has a value of $15-billion, achieved through labour costs roughly one-tenth of those in the West. The result is that one in 20 of Canada's finished drugs are produced in India.

About ten percent of the factories supplying active ingredients or finished products to Canada come from India, according to Health Canada. Indian facilities have been investigated then charged with sloppy practices including fraud. Leading Health Canada to launch a website listing concerns relating to standards at pharmaceutical factories, and of the new "Inspection Tracker" website focuses, eleven of the 15 plants listed were located in India.

Ten drugs were recalled from the active market due to quality defects in the last five months, and four of those were produced in Indian factories, including lots of antibiotic generics, removed due to fears that the intravenous solution was contaminated with foreign particles. Imports from both Dr. Reddy's Indian plant and another owned by IPCA Laboratories were shut off from entry into Canada by Health Canada. "Data integrity" issues; testing for the presence of active ingredients or impurities cited as the issues.

In 2004, Dinesh Thakur, a former executive with Ranbaxy Laboratories noticed that a generic antibiotic produced by the company he worked for designated for the home market in India did nothing to solve his son's severe ear infection. He switched his son's medication to the brand-name version of the drug and his son's high fever was down to normal overnight. That episode convinced him to reveal his findings.

Amit Bhargava/Bloomberg/Files   A researcher works in a Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. lab in Gurgaon, India.

And that led to a half-billion penalty imposed by the American government against Ranbaxy Laboratories in 2013 for selling adulterated drugs, for hiding incriminating data, and for misleading regulators. According to experts the outstanding problem with the Indian industry appears the regulatory system itself. Where the national regulator employs fewer than four hundred people to investigate over 1,300 factories.

State level regulators tasked with overseeing drugs exported abroad have a reputation for corruption. And nor are they trained sufficiently to do their job, even with corruption discounted. An Indian parliamentary committee three years earlier examining the drug-approval process, reached the conclusion that regulators conspired with the companies they governed rather than placing the interests of safe consumer products first.

"If parliament says that about their own regulators, you can imagine how bad things are", Mr. Thakur stated. "If you're only focused on costs, you don't know what the long-term outcomes are. I don't think there's enough science ... to say that mandatory generic substitution is always the right thing."

Scott Eells/Bloomberg   India's chief drug regulator has said he plans to add hundreds more staff and promised greater oversight.

Canada The Kind

"One of the main reasons I came down here was to find workers. A lot of that has to do with Alberta, with young people in New Brunswick moving out West where the better money is, and so there is a dwindling population."
"But then when you can also get $400 a week back home for doing nothing, why would you go to work for me, for an extra hundred bucks? That's the mentality back home. And it is a shame. But that is what it is. There are some really great workers there, but the unemployment rate during winter -- it's got to be north of 20%."
"Ten people are working for me now. I am hoping that number will be 20 in another month or so, and (then there) will be another round of hiring once we really get set up there (Maine). I have had 50, 60 applications come in. And they are all good applicants. Some bring skills, like electrical or mechanical, but the majority of them just have a good, strong work ethic. They may have been clamming, or painting, or doing whatever they had to do to survive here. It's not like they can hang around collecting a pogey cheque."
"Around here, when it comes to working, it seems to be like how it was back home decades ago."
Cory Guimond, owner, Millenium Marine (Guimond Boats)

Courtesy of Cory Guimond   Cory Guimond says he was forced to move his boat-building business to Maine from New Brunswick: “I have a lot of pride being from Escuminac, a lot of pride, and if I could have stayed, I would have.”

Mr. Guimond is deploring a fact of life in Eastern Canada, where the maritime coast is known for its seasonal employment and the generosity of the federal government in extending "employment insurance" to citizens of Canada's maritime provinces far in excess of their counterparts elsewhere in the country. It has been like that since forever. It is so well entrenched that people feel entitled to collect their payments when seasonal work has gone.

There is no stigma attached to this pattern of working for just enough hours to qualify. Employers and employees alike manipulate the system, considering it theirs to do so. People rely on what used to be called "unemployment" benefits, now re-named, strangely enough, as "employment" benefits; yet on the other hand, perhaps it is after all explicable. Taxpayers who are assessed on their own salaries for EI (employment insurance) pay for those who take short-term/temporary jobs to qualify.

And Gary Guimond, whose grandfather Philias began Millenium Marine in Escuminac, New Brunswick had a thriving business in the 1940s which his son later inherited and eventually his grandson took over. He is 39, a third generation New Brunswick builder of boats, but although he built half of the 81 fishing boats at the Escuminac wharf, he cannot find enough workers to keep his business viable in New Brunswick.

Photo, Cory Guimond

He had no option but to leave the south shore of Miramichi Bay to relocate to Maine, where orders for boats stream in at a rate he can barely keep up with; orders from the east and west U.S. seaboards; his product is in demand. No one wants to work in New Brunswick for between $12 to $20 an hour when 'welfare' pays just as well, is dependable and requires little effort to attain which is why the community he left has a 21.7% winter unemployment rate.

Younger, more ambitious New Brunswick workers go off to work in oil-wealthy Alberta where the jobs are challenging, numerous and extremely well-remunerated. So, in defeat and regret Cory Guimond relocated to Eastport, Maine and there he feels welcomed and is supremely confident that Guimond Boats has a future, even while nostalgia for New Brunswick assails him.

"Millenium Marine coming here is a win economically and a win for the community because it really reaffirms Eastport's boat-bulding heritage. People might say it's only ten, it is only twenty jobs, but that has huge repercussions for a community of less than 1,500 people."
"Eastport has always been known for its work ethic. People in Maine do what needs to be done."
Chris Gardner, director, Eastport port authority

"I am a third-generation boat builder. I have a lot of pride being from Escuminac -- a lot of pride -- and if I could have stayed, I would have. And I battled. I tried to find workers. And I don't think Canadians are lazy. Most of us are very hard workers, with a good work ethic. But I think we may be spoiled."

Economy or Environment?

It took awhile for the Industrial Revolution to transform the world. That industrial evolution succeeded in providing for those living in developing economies a transformative social change, where gradually equality of opportunity to own needed elementary goods and desirable objects that were once the purview of the aristocracy over time became available to all.

The revolutionary change in industrialization did quite a number of things; it provided employment, opportunities for entrepreneurship as never before, and made once-scarce commodities so relatively large in numbers of availability and so relatively modest in price that the separation between the wealthy and modestly-achieving wage-earners narrowed appreciably. What it also did was to cast a lingering pall of dirty air over the environment where coal was being fired to produce energy to enable manufacturing during the industrial revolution.

James Watt: Scottish inventor James Watt's improvements to the steam engine were instrumental during the Industrial Revolution. (Photo Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS)

In Europe and North America broadly speaking, those opportunities accelerated, the drive for new energy sources with water-power, natural gas and petroleum led to more manufacturing and more acquisitions and a wealthier society.

Africa and Asia were a lot slower to catch the industrialization train that huffed and puffed through the more advanced countries of the world, and while Africa is running after that train, Asia has stopped the train and informed the conductor that henceforth it would become mandatory that it stop there, first and foremost because it was the the new manufacturing venue.

The "Father of the Railways": In the 1820s, English engineer George Stephenson built the world's first steam-powered public railway line. (Photo Credit: Adam Woolfitt/CORBIS)

In a far shorter time than it took Europe and North America to harness the promise of the Industrial Revolution, China took the grips of opportunity and in 35 years eclipsed all their manufacturing to produce cheaper and quite desirable products, even those designed with a shorter life through built-in obsolescence, ensuring that purchases themselves accelerate and never quite stop, since items do, of course wear out and must be replaced.

China's dependence on energy sources (and raw materials) makes it a voracious consumer of fossil fuels to keep growing its enormous appetite for production and export, while at the same time hauling its immense 1.3-billion population out of once-endemic poverty.

China was enchanted and even mesmerized, brought to full attention by the success of Hong Kong as a British protectorate which embraced the Western free enterprise system and grew its economy like nothing China had ever imagined possible. When China signed the agreement with Britain that released Hong Kong back to its rightful geographic allegiance, Hong Kong's capitalist system was guaranteed for 50 years. And inspired by Hong Kong's raging success, China did the practical thing, holding on to its system of government, but relaxing it sufficiently to embrace economic opportunities by seeking to emulate its special 'province' for whom investment and free trade was a byword of world enterprise.

And so, how's China doing? It welcomed the world to have a look around when it hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, wowing the world with the sumptuous splendour and glitz of the fireworks that it had itself gifted to the world along with gunpowder. Embarrassed by its perpetual smog, it ordered factories to shut down operations in Beijing temporarily to clear the air.

Now, it not so much initiates new discoveries as copies the patents and enterprise of other countries' enterprising inventors and entrepreneurial class. But it has given itself a new lease on life, as it were. Greater numbers of its population are gainfully employed, the standard of living has skyrocketed, and Chinese newly-acquired wealth has permitted more Chinese than ever to see the world.

When they do go abroad as tourists they're able to breathe clean air, for one thing, temporary as that is. They get the idea that other countries exercise far more stringent laws on industrial effluent and its disposal, and the responsibility of governments to ensure that manufacturers clean up their messes rather than dump them into area rivers, polluting and poisoning fish and the people who eat them, farm animals and the people who raise them.

Hungry for all kinds of energy it imports from sources abroad, the Chinese still avidly mine the Earth's crust for coal, and are 70%-dependent on coal; dirty coal at that; for their energy needs. Chimney stacks proliferate in China's unbelievable number of mega-metropolises. And the consequences? Pollution is endemic. The skies are perpetually grey; the sun rarely manages to shine its beneficent gold illumination over Chinese towns, villages, farmlands, cities.

Traffic is congested not only because crowded city-dwellers can increasingly afford to own vehicles, but because the drivers of those vehicles are unable to proceed with safety when they cannot even see traffic signals clouded behind masses of environment-circulating particulate matter.



China, through determination, perseverance, cleverness and enterprise, has managed to surmount all the difficulties leading to economic success. It represents a huge success story. It is breathing hot down the neck of the United States as the number one world representative of political power and economic clout. And its people crowd hospitals, suffering from chronic asthma, congested lungs, and lung cancer; an eight-year-old child was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, resulting from constant exposure to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at catastrophic levels.

What price success?