Posted on 05/23/2007 8:40:06 AM PDT by mtnwmn
Tainted Chinese Imports Common In Four Months, FDA Refused 298 Shipments
By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer May 20, 2007
Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.
Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.
Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.
Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.
These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.
For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.
Now the confluence of two events -- the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week's resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China -- has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.
Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.
"So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible," said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What ever doesn’t kill you ... only makes you weaker for the eventual war with china.
The idea that we have to import any food from anywhere is itself a national disgrace. We already dropped the ball on being energy independent... will we not be able to feed ourselves either now?
Umm, you pay farmers billions of dollars not to grow crops and the crops they do grow to rot.
Tainted Chinese Imports..........careful what you eat.
bumper
We will not bring a Billion Chinese up to our level. They will pull us down to their level.
I know some people are making a ton of money off the deal, but do we really want to lash our rafts together like this?
And they shift more of the cost of the labor to the rest of us by hiring illegals to pick the crops. You'd think with all these incentives we would at least have enough food to feed our people.
Even "Made In The USA" doesn't mean a damned thing if the ingredients are coming from China to begin with.
Somewhere in China, tonight, a mother is telling her child to finish his peas, and giving him a guilt trip about all those malnourished children in America.
If a company inside the US was found to be doing something like this it would be shut down, locked, and boarded up. I don’t see why companies out of China seem to just keep pumping out the poison while our government just watches it all come in.
checking my labels carefully tioga !
Why? As the chief executive, HE is responsible for what the FDA does. Unfortunately, they're too busy trying to regulate vitamin supplements and prescription meds from Canada (the horror!) to worry about safe food under his watch.
And so many folks wonder why so many of us are turning to growing our own on a larger scale than before.........
SG makes sure that she’s safe by avoiding veggies of any kind... ; )
The FDA is totally inept at protecting our food supplies, yet idiots like Kennedy and Waxman want to give them more control over US products such as vitamins and tobacco.
Ummmmmmmmmm - there are also problems with the feed our meat and poultry are eating.........
This one should be easy. Close the door to the Chinese until they can prove the safety of their products. I have never seen anything coming out of China that is worth a dam anyway. I now look to see where products are made, no matter what it is. I totally refuse to buy anything from China.
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