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> It doesn't really hurt the Amazons, they're just distributors. I'm doing my first FDA-monitored automation project at a local brewery, and am quickly becomin

> It doesn't really hurt the Amazons, they're just distributors. I'm doing my first FDA-monitored automation project at a local brewery, and am quickly becoming familiar with the abundant controls that the FDA puts on domestic producers. But the FDA is an American organization. Amazon or Ebay or Aliexpress or whoever may be just distributors, but they're international distributors. They're fully-automated self-service distributors for manufacturers in China and Russia and Indonesia and India who aren't subject to FDA jurisdiction, who sometimes aren't subject to any oversight at all. The only entity that the FDA can go after here is Amazon, so this should hurt Amazon.

galangalalgol 3y ago
The FCC should be going after them too. A lot of the wireless stuff they sell isn't registered.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  Yes, the FCC should be going after Amazon as well. I have more experience with that as an electrical engineer who's just getting into FDA-adjacent work. But the FCC's position is that if I as an electrical engineer want to sell my neighbor here in the US some custom PCB with an antenna, I need to go through testing that costs many thousands of dollars. If an EE in Shenzhen wants to sell my neighbor the same PCB over Alibaba, Aliexpress, Banggood, Wish, Temu, Shein, Gearbest, or whatever new discount importer is hot I can't keep up anymore, or Ebay/Amazon/Target/Walmart.com, they're just going to create a listing and import it. The FCC simply cannot keep up. What I don't understand is how they're getting through Customs and Border Patrol. If I want to ship a spare off-the-shelf PLC digital input card for a machine to one of my customers who has a satellite facility in Mexico, there's a 50% chance it gets held up for a month or more. Meanwhile these big distributors have no issues with air-freight shipments of a GPS jammer or raw testosterone direct to American doorsteps in 3 days. Edit: it seems obvious to me that the CBP should be partially responsible verifying that stuff going through customs subject to FCC or FDA jurisdiction complies with FCC or FDA regulations, or at least to forward the question to the appropriate agency.
  - hattmall 3y ago
    Customs is only barely about checking for prohibited items. It's primarily about collecting the proper revenue for goods. The US isn't very protectionist so customs is extremely loose. In Mexico they are far more concerned about collecting revenue from customers of US businesses so the customs is more thorough. Based on my experience importing there's about a 2-3% chance any sort of inspection is done at all and that's generally just cursory to compare with the stated manifest classification. Not a search for contraband.

galangalalgol 3y ago

The FCC should be going after them too. A lot of the wireless stuff they sell isn't registered.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Yes, the FCC should be going after Amazon as well. I have more experience with that as an electrical engineer who's just getting into FDA-adjacent work. But the FCC's position is that if I as an electrical engineer want to sell my neighbor here in the US some custom PCB with an antenna, I need to go through testing that costs many thousands of dollars. If an EE in Shenzhen wants to sell my neighbor the same PCB over Alibaba, Aliexpress, Banggood, Wish, Temu, Shein, Gearbest, or whatever new discount importer is hot I can't keep up anymore, or Ebay/Amazon/Target/Walmart.com, they're just going to create a listing and import it. The FCC simply cannot keep up. What I don't understand is how they're getting through Customs and Border Patrol. If I want to ship a spare off-the-shelf PLC digital input card for a machine to one of my customers who has a satellite facility in Mexico, there's a 50% chance it gets held up for a month or more. Meanwhile these big distributors have no issues with air-freight shipments of a GPS jammer or raw testosterone direct to American doorsteps in 3 days. Edit: it seems obvious to me that the CBP should be partially responsible verifying that stuff going through customs subject to FCC or FDA jurisdiction complies with FCC or FDA regulations, or at least to forward the question to the appropriate agency.
- hattmall 3y ago
  Customs is only barely about checking for prohibited items. It's primarily about collecting the proper revenue for goods. The US isn't very protectionist so customs is extremely loose. In Mexico they are far more concerned about collecting revenue from customers of US businesses so the customs is more thorough. Based on my experience importing there's about a 2-3% chance any sort of inspection is done at all and that's generally just cursory to compare with the stated manifest classification. Not a search for contraband.