For Air Cargo, a Screening Conundrum

Ever since 9/11, each new security threat to airlines has increased the rigor of passenger screening. They have to remove their shoes and carry liquids only in small containers. They have to take off their belts and take laptops out of their cases. Now, they have to submit to full-body scanning machines and intrusive pat-downs.

But since the discovery in October of explosives from Yemen hidden in ink cartridges on cargo planes, the $50 billion freight business has seen little of the same kind of escalating security.

Even in the midst of one of the air cargo industry’s busiest periods of the year, governments and aviation experts continue to struggle to come up with ways to strengthen cargo security without paralyzing a business essential to global trade.

Still, that could change. Cargo safety has suddenly emerged as one of the biggest topics in aviation security. Governments around the world have pledged to tackle the problem, while in Congress, lawmakers are calling for much tougher inspections of cargo.

The cargo industry has resisted one idea: screening all cargo. It argues that such a step is impractical since most airports do not have the space to screen all the packages shipped each day. And some goods, including perishable products and medical supplies, may not survive a long wait at the airport to be screened.

“It’s the old conundrum,” said Billie Vincent, a former security director for the Federal Aviation Administration. “Do you put the industry out of business in the process of making it safe?”

Screening passengers is far simpler than inspecting cargo. More than 1,600 airports worldwide are funneling passengers through security lines and metal detectors.

But air cargo can come from countless sources and comprises countless kinds of goods, including fresh produce, medical supplies and electronic devices. The cargo industry itself is fragmented, too, with door-to-door shippers like DHL, United Parcel Service and FedEx; all-cargo airlines; and shipping companies that rent cargo space on passenger planes. Air cargo represents about 40 percent of the value of global trade.

As a result, the Transportation Security Administration, which handles all passenger screening in the United States, has taken a different approach to air cargo. It mostly relies on the cargo industry to screen its own freight. And freight is inspected in factories or in warehouses, by shippers, freight operators or airlines, in this country or overseas.

Reflecting the T.S.A.’s focus on passenger safety, it received $5.2 billion for aviation security in the last fiscal year and just $123 million for cargo security.

And while new safety procedures were adopted for passengers almost immediately after 9/11, it wasn’t until 2007 that Congress passed a law requiring all cargo on passenger planes to be screened. The new requirement has been in effect since August.

But Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who wrote the mandate, said it still left a “safety loophole” because freight on cargo planes, which accounts for 85 percent of all air cargo, is not subject to the same screening. After the Yemen incident, Mr. Markey introduced a bill to extend the screening mandate to all cargo planes.

“As the terrorists are turning to cargo planes as a delivery device for their deadly plans, we now need to secure cargo planes,” Mr. Markey said recently. “We simply can’t afford to leave this vulnerability open.”

Cargo experts contend that it is far more effective to focus on packages coming from risky countries, or from unknown shippers with no track record of business or those who pay in cash. Well-established companies that ship goods regularly, the experts say, present much less of a safety risk and therefore require less scrutiny.

“Screening every piece of freight on every single freight aircraft coming or leaving the United States would be a tremendous challenge and would not equate to 100 percent air cargo security,” said Brandon Fried, the president of the Airforwarders Association, an industry trade group. “The focus should be on who is shipping what, and where.”