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Prove you are importing a 'safe' milk related product (and take on the liability of that proof) and the FDA will release your shipment into the United States.  On your mark, get ready, set, go....

Not in such a hurry?  Who can blame you.

The US and the FDA are showing their ineffectuality both in their 100% ban and in pushing the burden not on their own regulators and testers that are too under staffed to make a difference, but to importers of record.

Federal food safety officials yesterday began holding up shipments of food from China that contain milk or milk-derived ingredients in the largest effort to date to keep products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine from reaching U.S. consumers.

The Food and Drug Administration is requiring importers of the halted shipments to test for the chemical, which is used to make plastic and fertilizer but has been added to human and animal food to boost protein readings. The types of products likely to be waylaid are cookies, candies, and other goods made with milk or milk powder.

If an importer can prove his product is not tainted, FDA will release it, said Steve Solomon, the agency's deputy associate commissioner for compliance and policy. The agency also will step up its testing of products already on the market.

U.S. Blocks Chinese Milk Products

The obvious flaw in this action is that there will still be some importers that will route these products through other countries and use false information, documentation or whatever it takes to move their goods, defective or not.

This may block the easy items, but the hard work has yet to be done.