Posted on 05/14/2007 3:01:12 PM PDT by kellynla
The vast production of food in the United States is one of the greatest achievements of American free enterprise society of a superior system of patents that encourages the invention of fantastically efficient farm machinery. In one of America's favorite patriotic songs, we wax lyrical about our "amber waves of grain."
The Clinton administration conned American farmers into being the principal lobbyists in 2000 for passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China, which gave Chinese goods unconditional access to U.S. markets.
Former President Bill Clinton promised in his State of the Union address that Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China would be a win-win for American agriculture because "this agreement will open China's market to us." The Department of Agriculture under Clinton predicted that the average annual value of U.S. agricultural exports to China would increase by $1.5 billion.
Globalization turned out to be a cheat. Department of Commerce figures show that U.S. wheat exports to China are less today than before the passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations.
Cheap labor in Asia can produce some agricultural products less expensively than they can be with all our expensive equipment, and China's food exports to the United States have become a $2.1 billion industry. The United States is now importing 13 percent of the food Americans eat.
But Americans can't count the cost merely in dollars and in bushels. China simply doesn't have health, sanitary or safety standards that Americans expect for the U.S. food supply. So the United States recently discovered that China has been intentionally mixing an industrial chemical called melamine into pet food and animal feed imported by U.S. companies and sold here under more than 100 brand names. Melamine, which is both a contaminant and byproduct of several pesticides, is used to make plastic kitchenware, glues, countertops, fabrics, fertilizers and flame retardants.
Because melamine is high in nitrogen, the Chinese have been putting it into wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate in order to trick Americans into thinking they are buying feed with higher protein content. Melamine has no nutritional value.
As this scandal unfolds, we also learn that the Chinese have been putting cyanuric acid, a chemical related to melamine that is used in chlorination during pool cleaning, into wheat gluten products sold to the United States.
The Food and Drug Administration discovered this deception when pets started dying. Melamine contamination is implicated in some 4,000 cat and dog deaths, 60 million packages of pet food have been recalled, and regulators have blocked all Chinese imports of wheat gluten and warned importers to screen every kind of food and feed additive coming from China.
Americans also learned that 6,000 hogs in eight states might have been fed salvage products containing tainted rice gluten, and several hundred of these hogs may have entered the human food supply. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has put a hold on 20 million chickens raised for human consumption that ate melamine-tainted feed.
After a lot of denials and haggling, China announced it is banning the use of melamine and agreed to allow the United States to do some inspection of food processing in China. But inspections in China cannot produce U.S.-style safety because of the sprawling and fragmented food-processing industry in a vast country where poisonings from tainted products are common.
The FDA inspects only 1.3 percent of imported food, but even that small amount reveals plenty that would cause Americans to lose their appetite. Chinese foods detained by the FDA in March alone included frozen catfish tainted with illegal veterinary drugs, fresh ginger polluted with pesticides, melon seeds contaminated with a cancer-causing toxin, and filthy dried dates.
Why didn't the FDA and Department of Agriculture protect us from melamine contamination? They operate on what is called a "risk-based" inspection philosophy, focusing on specific foods where there is the biggest potential risk.
Apparently, melamine wasn't on the "risk" list because no one suspected that the Chinese would deliberately adulterate their food exports with this chemical. The 98.7 percent of Chinese food that we do not inspect enters the U.S. as a matter of trust.
In another scandal, it has been discovered that the Chinese put diethylene glycol, a prime ingredient used in antifreeze, into many varieties of medicines including cough syrup, fever medication, and injectable drugs. This poison was substituted for glycerin, a sweet-tasting solvent commonly and safely used in drugs, but which is more expensive than diethylene glycol.
Diethylene glycol has killed hundreds of people in Panama, Haiti and other countries. It's next to impossible to track and verify the Chinese manufacturers and numerous middlemen, as the poisoned medicines traveled through various trading companies and countries, with the labels repeatedly altered.
For years, globalists and free-traders have been ignoring and winking at the adverse consequences of trade with China. Maybe China's poisoning of our pets will be one offense too many to tolerate.
Unfortunately it’s not just our pets being poisoned.
The commies could be poisoning a lot of food coming into America as a means of subversion.
I thought there were a lot of starving Chinese. If so, why are they selling the food here? Is it because we have more money than their peasants?
And we , in turn, give away food to Africa and other places.
Now it really makes sense to buy imported food and give away our food production as an export.
Especially when the imported food could contain all kinds of toxic chemicals and disease and parasites that could destroy our food.
Trade with commie China is not worth the risk to national security.
If our govenment had any sense at all, we would stop all imports of food or additives from China immediately. I, for one, am completely willing to pay a little more for food grown in the US. But I really don't see any reason why it should cost more.
You'd might know though, that Clinton had something to do with this.
FYI
“If our govenment had any sense at all, we would stop all imports of food or additives from China immediately.”
While I am a stauch supporter of capitalism, I fear that unless people are dropping dead in the street nothing will be done while the finacial portfolios of our leaders and/or the very wealthy contains anything related to any multinational firm(s) involved in the manufacture or shipping of any food products
China’s only one of the countries.Beef and strawberries from Mexico got into our food chain and made people sick also.How about we just start feeding ourselves like we used to and forget this foreign food idea !!!
We should bring all of our strategic manufacturing home.
Reading stiff like this, is where I start to lean back toward my old friend Pat Buchanan and his brand of isolationism.
“How about we just start feeding ourselves like we used to and forget this foreign food idea”
Makes sense to me...which is exactly why it won’t happen! LOL
We should bring all of our strategic manufacturing (and farming) home.
We were taught that California alone was capable of FEEDING THE WORLD!
We have an election soon. Let’s see if all here really do want to change or will we get the same things as the Bushes & Klintons have shoved at us. Why wish for change, we’ll get the same from the sheeple as the MSN will set the players with the money from the elites.
Stoopit Americans.
Michigan used to produce huge amounts of cold weather, root and fruit crops not to mention manufacturing. Willow run played an integral part in the arsenal of democracy during WWII.
Good article—thank you.
“Don’t buy the stuff...!!”
well in the case of pet foods...we don’t even KNOW where the heck the stuff comes form...
bookmark for later printing.
Bump!
Our problem is, like naive dupes who have read a few too many Thomas L. Freedman spewings, we assume that most countries can be trusted, save a few on a truly bad list (e.g. DPRK, Iran, Syria, Cuba, etc). When instead, it should be the other way around. We should only import food from (and perhaps, should only allow unrestricted trade with) the short list of countries who share our values. What a concept. How old fashioned. I am a self admitted knuckle dragger ... LOL!
And remember: “...hepatitis A that struck restaurant diners in the US earlier this fall was caused by green onions...”
I say we take China to task for these poisons in our food and this should create a legitimate uproar in the media, especially with Fox News (hint, hint) and use the resulting backlash, threaten their import monies, not only for better imported food but maybe as a bargaining chip for other concessions such as, I dunno, deflating their currency?
I thought he found viagra in his instant noodles.
The problem with “not buying the stuff” is that you can buy food made in the US with foreign ingredients, and it is not so marked.
Mrs VS
You’d think that simply hauling stuff around the US would have a cost benefit over shipping it across the ocean and then STILL hauling it around the country. Even if the US food is slightly more expensive, the lack of freight from bringing it over from China should make up some of the difference.
NY produces grapes, apples, cherries, peaches, pears, potatoes, onions, and corn, lettuce. There are other cool weather crops that can be grown here. You can get NY wine, great honey, maple syrup. Some of the local farm markets and displays at the state fair look like any produce department at a grocery store. Sure, it’s only in the summer, but some of that stuff keeps really well.
Sellout by our overlords ping
Nice summary. A dose of isolationism is in order!
Now I don’t want even eat fortune cookies.
Sounds good to me.
Yeah, you're right about that. We are avid label readers and we avoid all processed, packaged, foods...everything fresh and American grown with rare exception, the meat organic, and the fish wild.
We also have a good garden (with not quite as much sun as I would like.)
It's not a trivial problem, keeping up with what the marketing heads are trying to do to you.
Fortunately, the food we feed our three cats was not among any of those containing contaminants (so far.) BG
I think that food in the U.S. is priced toooo low in the supermarket!
Look at all the overweight people 68%? Or eat all you can at Golden Coral for under 10 bucks!!
One food serving in the U.S. would feed four (4) people in Sweden where the food stuff in the store are higher priced. But, then you don't either see the equally "fat" people there who for years had the longest lifespan in the world, and I think that because they were healthier and NOT eating themselves to death which is happening here because of the low food prices, whether eating out or at home!!!
I dunno. I don’t think produce is underpriced.
I recall an incident several years ago. A woman, her mother, and her (not so) little 4 year old were entering the store at the same time I was. The girl was enormous for her age and wanted to walk. No, they stuffed her in the shopping cart.
When the got to the produce aisle, her was begging for some apples. NO! She got yelled at.
They left the area, I picked up what I wanted and continued on. I passed them in the bakery, and the mother was asking her very obese 4 year old which donuts she would like.
The poor kid would have been so much better off walking and having the bag of apples.
*sigh*
We should terminate Red China's normal trade relations with the United States.
The Clinton administration was a great disaster in foreign relations; the only administration equaling it was the Carter administration.
Unfortunately it’s not just our pets being poisoned.<<<<<
You are right and we do not have the numbers, if we did, the whole nation would be outraged.
Good article, thanks for the ping.
He (Hunter) said China rebates its own taxes on all of its exported goods, and then imposes taxes on American imports, thus providing about a $34 advantage for every $100 of actual value of its own products. The United States, though, does not impose import duties of that sort, nor does it rebate the taxes on our own exports.
“Republicans are the party of markets, but we’re not the party of dumb markets,” he said. “Trade agreements are business deals, and it is more important than ever that we have smart business deals. What I am proposing is not protectionism, it’s just reciprocity. And it is important because they are using the trade to develop 75-100 short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles each year and to construct a large number of submarines....That’s ominous.”
excerpt from: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11188
Red China has been cheating a long time, and now they’re cheating on food, which affects our health, and even endangers our lives.
well Molly, the middle class seems to be disappearing and we are turning into a nation of service workers with CEO and celebs for royalty
Random loopiness Sarcasm TorpedoTM ARMED. FIRE!!
But thanks to global warming, Michigan has now become a net importer of cold weather.
Sad, isn't it?
Cheers!
Wow. This is scary stuff. I don’t trust China as far as I can throw it, and even less so now.
“Reading stiff like this?”
I think you meant....reading stuff like this. LOL
There were so many ways I could answer this, none of them would pass muster with the monitors, LOL.
Bump to read later, and to point out poison to people not paying attention.
Even the Pope, speaking in Brazil, thinks unfettered capitalism and globalization are bad things. He said, they deepen the divide between the rich and poor, create vast monopolies, make profit the overriding objective, cause leaders to deviate from God's will.
Pope Bennie is right. Capitalism may be the only system to bring people into a solid middle class, but the values we used to have in this country don’t exist in Asia, where everyone’s main goal seems to be to lord it over others. We’re becoming that way too. Ah, Christian ethics, where are art thou?
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