US climbdown on container scanning?

Peter Quantrill, director general of the British International Freight Association (BIFA) said it was “hardly surprising” to hear about the delay because there has always been the question over whether this is the best way to protect US ports.

He said: “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has consistently underestimated the enormity of the task in hand relative to the costs both to the US government and foreign governments, as well as, importantly, the limited ability of contemporary screening technology to penetrate dense cargo, or large quantities of cargo in shipping containers.”

BIFA’s comments come on the back of media reports of a letter from Thomas Carper, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which suggested that the use of systems available to scan containers would have a negative impact on trade capacity and the flow of cargo.

Mr Quantrill pointed out that this suggests that the US government now doubts whether it would be able to implement the mandate of 100% scanning even in the long term.

BIFA said that it has long maintained the opinion that security scanning is not the best use of taxpayer resources to meet the US’s port and homeland security needs.

This isn’t the first time that the decision has been delayed. The US government had planned to have systems in place capable of scanning every container entering US ports – about 11.6m teu per year – by 2012, but this was again delayed by two years due to gaps in the logistics chain.