The saying "all issues are local issues" struck home today; returning from London to the Tri-Cities of Tennessee and Virginia, I attended the Washington County / Johnson City Economic Development Summit, where the keynote focused on homeland security.
Ms. Ann M. Beauchesne, Executive Director of the Homeland Security Department at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spoke at the lunch-time keynote slot regarding disaster recovery and other issues surrounding homeland security.
One issue she addressed, though, hit home for global trading: the goal of scanning 100% of all incoming containers, prior to landing in the US.
"It's a great soundbite on the Hill," said Ms. Beauchesne, "to say that we need to have 100% of shipped containers scanned before import. Unfortunately, the technology is not yet available to do this; forcing 100% scanning on the transportation industry would grind transportation to a halt."
Having visited several ports, including a large trans-shipping port near Valletta, Malta, that received, repacks and forwards on thousands of containers per day, I can attest that the attempted policies would significantly undermine shipping timeliness.
At the Malta port, a single container scanner is available - courtesy of the US Department of Homeland Security - that takes close to 5 minutes to scan a single container.
It's hard to imagine the backlog that would be faced with the current technology, with weeks building to months in terms of receiving container shipments. Let's hope the US Chamber of Commerce is successful in its goal to hold off the requirement for 100% scanning at foreign ports - until such a time as the technology makes it feasible to scan each container in less than 90 seconds.
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