Why Pick on China?

Posted on July 6, 2007
by Maureen Keene

Because China started it. When I first learned of the recent massive tainted pet food recall, I scanned the enormous list of brands in a panic to see if my regular brands were included. After confirming my cats and dogs were safe, the next step was to alert everyone else I know who has a cat or dog. Over the following days after the initial story broke, I kept tabs on the news updates and the rapidly growing list of brands with morbid curiosity and disgust. And what I learned in the process is that the U.S. is dependent on China for everything. Everything. (Beyond clothes, toys, electronics, and disposable drek of all sorts.) Before this travesty I was unaware that the U.S. imports wheat gluten and many other common food ingredients (garlic, apple juice, honey, ascorbic acid, and more) from China. I never gave much thought to where individual ingredients came from — I assumed that when the box of crackers or cereal or whatever had a U.S. company name on it with an address of Battle Creek or Cincinnati or Minneapolis, that was all I needed to know. I was blissfully (and dangerously) ignorant of today’s global food supply chain.

The more I read, the more incredulous I became. Why does the land of amber waves of grain need wheat products from China? Why does the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed import more than 50% of its apple juice? Well the answer is, of course, because it’s cheaper, stupid. (And my answer to that is, you get what you pay for, but that’s another discussion…)

So as I Googled, I found story after story filled with horrifying facts about how much food we import into the U.S. and — here comes the horrifying part – how very little of it is inspected. And how great quantities of food ingredients come from China. And how great quantities of the little that is actually inspected from China is rejected for being “filthy” and otherwise not up to U.S. standards.

I couldn’t look at the news without seeing stories about dangerous products coming from China– extremely toxic and deadly blowfish from China mislabeled as monkfish, toothpaste with antifreeze chemicals in it, and innocuous little Thomas the Train toys coated in lead paint.

And then, I read that the wheat gluten used in the food that killed so many thousands of beloved pets was poisoned on purpose. The company that produced it intentionally used melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizers, to artificially boost the protein content so they could charge a little more for it. Thousands of pet owners watched helplessly as their cats and dogs suffered and died painful deaths so that some company in China could make a little more money on their product.

It’s on, China. It’s on now.

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