Consumer Affairs: Year In Review 1994Article Free Pass
The signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade on April 15, 1994, was one of the year’s most significant events for consumers everywhere. In theory, consumers stood to benefit from freer trade, in the form of more products and lower prices. The phaseout of quotas for clothing and textiles could be seen as a plus for less developed countries (LDCs). Consumers also stood to benefit from improvements in the procedures for settling disputes between countries. On the other hand, there were concerns that the agreement might lead to lower national food standards and higher drug prices in the LDCs. In 1962 the richest 20% of the world population (most of whom lived in the North) had 30 times the income of the poorest 20%. In 1994 the gap was 60 times as great, and the role the new trade rules would play in shrinking that chasm was unclear.
Nowhere was this problem more clearly illustrated than in Africa, where consumers faced ongoing basic problems, such as poor service, a lack of awareness of consumer rights, and a shortage of funds. The move away from command economies that were heavily regulated and controlled by governments to more liberal open markets was welcome in many areas, but it also created new problems for consumers, such as huge and sudden price increases. In some African countries consumer organizations flourished, but more than a dozen of the poorest African countries still had no consumer movement. Overall, Africa in the 1990s was characterized by increased political tolerance, allowing the emergence of consumer and other movements. A model consumer protection law for Africa based on the 1985 UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection was due to be published in 1995. It was anticipated that this model would be used for lobbying across the continent at the regional and national level. The International Organization of Consumers Unions opened its first African office, in Harare, Zimbabwe, in March 1994. It signified the first attempt to bring the continent’s diverse consumer organizations together under one pan-Africa umbrella.
Japanese consumers won greater protection through passage in 1994 of the country’s first product liability law. India became one of the first LDCs to begin "ecolabeling"--letting customers know the environmental impact of the product they were buying. Eight of Asia’s countries, however, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Cambodia, remained among the world’s poorest nations, and many people continued to struggle to meet their most basic needs of clean water, adequate food, and shelter.
In the South Pacific, a fledgling consumer movement was fast-growing where Western-style consumerism had come quickly. In the Solomon Islands, for example, people who were moving away from their traditional healthful diet of coconut, tuna, and taro were facing new health conditions, including heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Stories of people trading the fresh fish in their diet for canned Spam were common. Basic consumer education such as how to identify out-of-date packaged food was often needed.
In Latin America consumers breathed a sigh of relief in 1994 as the region emerged from the deep economic crisis of the previous decade. Governments pressed ahead with massive programs to liberalize trade, privatize public enterprises, and deregulate domestic markets. Economic gains had their ups and downs, and 40% of the region’s population still earned less than a minimum wage and lacked sufficient access to basic consumer goods and services.
The lack of basic services for much of the world was highlighted by World Consumer Rights Day, held annually on March 15. The problems were everywhere; in Mexico the monopoly telephone company raised user costs by 160% over two years, and in El Salvador an estimated 30% of city dwellers and 80% of rural inhabitants had no access to piped water.
Perhaps the most dramatic changes in 1994 were felt in the former Soviet bloc countries, where consumers were grappling with the pluses and minuses of living in newly privatized economies. Throughout the republics of the former Soviet Union, the main issues were still the lack of available goods, poor quality, and fake and dangerous products, many of them imported. The breakdown of centralized structures continued, and problems with public services increased, particularly with medical services, housing, and transport.
Implementation of consumer protection legislation in these countries continued to be a major problem. Russian consumers could claim a victory in 1994, however; the courts ruled that services, as well as goods, should be included in the 1992 Law on the Protection of Consumers’ Rights. The need for strict financial services legislation and better consumer education was demonstrated by the thousands of Russians who invested in a stock pyramid scheme and ended up losing their life savings. In Romania some four million people--50% of the population--took part in a pyramid investment scheme that collapsed in 1993.
Western European consumers in 1994 closely followed the changes in the European Union (EU) and expansion of its membership. Maintaining high health and safety standards in a single European market was the focus of much consumer concern. Many countries were afraid that membership in the EU would compromise their national health and safety standards. Consumer groups charged that the European Commission favoured industry concerns over consumer needs. In 1994, however, they managed to win a seven-year battle when the Commission agreed to regulate cross-border payments--when people send money from one country to another. Consumers would no longer have to pay double service charges to banks, and the Commission established bank liability on all payments.
At the end of the year, consumer groups everywhere were gearing up for the World Summit for Social Development, to be held in Copenhagen in March 1995. Organizers hoped it would be the people’s equivalent of the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro.
In 1994 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially launched the most extensive renovation of food labels in 20 years. Mandated by the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, the initiative imposed strict new standards for health, nutrition, and serving-size labeling claims from processors and manufacturers. For the first time, nutrition labels were required on most food packages, an estimated 90% of processed food sold in the marketplace--upwards of 285 billion items. Previously, only foods that made special claims or contained added nutrients had to carry labels, although processors labeled many other foods voluntarily.
Under the revised regulations, the FDA designed the new labels to provide consumers with a standard reference point, the "Daily Value," representing the average diet for a healthy adult (set at 2,000 calories). The listed amounts of a product’s fat, cholesterol, sodium, fibre, and nutrients also had to be presented as a percentage of this Daily Value.
The Flavr Savr tomato became the first whole food produced by genetic engineering to reach the marketplace. Calgene Inc., of Davis, Calif., bred the tomato with a new version of a gene that affects the ripening process in tomatoes. The introduction of this gene allowed the Flavr Savr to remain firm longer than traditional tomatoes, increasing the time it could stay on the vine and ripen, thus allowing it to achieve better flavour than other commercially produced tomatoes. It was marketed amid heightened consumer concern over labeling and the safety of genetically engineered foods.
Biotechnology critics had sparked the controversy when the first milk produced with the aid of genetic engineering was marketed earlier in the year. Although that process had been approved by the relevant health agencies, critics said that as-yet-unknown risks could develop--if not in milk, then in other products slated for the market in coming years--and consumers would not be able to avoid them. Biotechnology proponents said such concerns stemmed from a misunderstanding of the science involved in genetic engineering. Half of all consumers surveyed said they would avoid genetically engineered products, according to the Wirthlin Group Inc., but such resistance would lessen if the technology resulted in consistently lower food prices.
Steps toward a major change in how consumers buy their electric power were taken by the California Public Utility Commission, which proposed fully opening electric power service to retail competition by the year 2002. Without utility monopolies, under which consumers were forced to purchase power at set rates from a local utility, business and residential consumers could shop among power companies for the best prices--much like people already shopped for long-distance telephone service. The proposed changes would allow consumers to tap into existing networks of electricity transmission that connect power companies nationwide.
Efforts to open the electricity market to consumers in California, New York, and other states were opposed by critics in the utility industry, who said open competition would cause stock values to plummet, and by some environmentalist groups, which held that cheaper power would increase electricity use and thus air pollution.
Despite the popularity and growing safety reputation among consumers, antilock brakes in automobiles were found to offer no clear advantage on the nation’s roads. A study by the Highway Loss Data Institute found that antilock brakes were not reducing either the frequency or the cost of car crashes, including crashes on wet and slippery roads, where antilocks should have proved advantageous. The researchers said the problem was not the technology, which demonstrated clear benefits under test conditions, but drivers who did not know how to brake with antilocks properly. The Institute also cited studies showing that some drivers in cars equipped with antilock brakes drove less safely.
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