Die for PRChina, per Clinton, Gingrich, and GWB

HT: Charlie

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

China's less-than-stellar behavior as a food exporter is revealed in stomach-turning detail in FDA "refusal reports" filed by U.S. inspectors: Juices and fruits rejected as "filthy." Prunes tinted with chemical dyes not approved for human consumption. Frozen breaded shrimp preserved with nitrofuran, an antibacterial that can cause cancer. Swordfish rejected as "poisonous."

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.

Most-Favored-Nation trading status helped a lot, folks. (That would be Clinton and Gingrich.)

...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.

"Our farmers and food processors have drooled for years to be able to sell their food to that massive market," Foreman said. "The Chinese counterfeit. They have a serious piracy problem. But we put up with it because we want to sell to them."

That nice smiley Farmer Brown, or "food processing firm" that has all those cute commercials...

Under Agriculture Department rules, countries cannot export meat and poultry products to the United States unless the USDA certifies that the slaughterhouses and processing plants have food-safety systems equivalent to those here. Much to its frustration, China is not certified to sell any meat to the United States because it has not met that requirement.

But that has not stopped Chinese meat exporters. In the past year, USDA teams have seized hundreds of thousands of pounds of prohibited poultry products from China and other Asian countries, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced in March. Some were shipped in crates labeled "dried lily flower," "prune slices" and "vegetables," according to news reports. It is unclear how much of the illegal meat slipped in undetected.

It would be interesting to know the addressee(s), would it not?

But in the aftermath of the recent food scandals, a growing number of companies and trade groups, including Grocery Manufacturers of America, are speaking in favor of at least a little more protection, starting with a doubling of the FDA's food safety budget.

The article quotes a number of "activists" and "safety" groups which point the finger at the Bush Administration. We have our reservations about the China-Fever that GWB & Co. have evidenced over the years.

But it's also very important to recall that it was Gingrich and Clinton who jammed Most-Favored-Nation trading status for PRChina through--despite all those inconvenient mass murders and body-parts sales.

But hey!!

The FreeTraitors continue to tell us that Cheap Is Good!

(Just don't eat any Cheap.)