COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, June 09, 2007

US Food Quality not up to Chinese Standards

More from the people that put melamine in wheat by-products to increase the apparent protein count, and shipped tooth paste and cough medicine with industrial diethylene glycol misused as a sweetener.

China destroys U.S. imports on safety grounds

Reuters, The Associated Press IHT
Published: June 8, 2007



BEIJING: Raisins and health supplements imported from the United States failed to meet Chinese safety standards and have been returned or destroyed, the country's food safety agency said Friday.

The move comes as China itself faces international criticism, especially in the United States, over a series of scandals that have plagued Chinese food, drugs and other products from poisoned cough syrup to tainted toothpaste and pet food.

Inspectors in the ports of Ningbo and Shenzhen found bacteria and sulfur dioxide in products shipped by three American companies, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

"The products failed to meet the sanitary standards of China," the agency said in a brief notice posted on its Web site. No details were given on when or how the inspections were conducted.

The agency said it was asking "all local departments to increase quarantine examinations of foods imported from the United States."

Telephones at the administration's office were not answered on Friday.


17 comments:

  1. All "Free" Trade is good.
    Only those who do not have the best interests of the country in mind would question that.

    Mediocre MBAs and the WSJ agree.
    Nuf said.

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  2. (that would include unrestricted free trade of labor commodity units)

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  3. NeoNIMBYs:

    Don't use pesticides in "our backyard"

    Instead, import food laced with it from the Chicom Slave Labor Camps and Corrupt Billionaire "Farmers" in Mexico!

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  4. I know that the quality of wheat for export has gone up over the years, in part because of Japanese and
    Chinese pressure. The got pickier and pickier about what they'd take. The warehouse would tighten the standard for moisture content, foreign matter, amount of protein in the various types, etc. Of course if China had a massive drought they'd take anythig. I had a system of grain bins for storage. I've stored wheat for three years and if you put it in with a low moisture content you're fine. Pop in an insecticide tablet every three months or so. I'd truck it down to Lewiston and sell it there. What amazed me though, seeing the higher standards in the warehouses around Moscow, was when I trucked stuff from my bins to Lewiston(Lewiston is an inland port) there sometimes they would have a huge pile of wheat on the ground uncovered, open to the rain, and the geese(I'd see geese shitting on this pile of wheat). How they got away with that I don't know. People were discussing it in the newspaper there one winter. Well, it's our wheat we can do with it what we want they'd say. If it sits there long enough it sort of forms a crust from the rain I quess. Comes out of my bin clean, sits there in the rain, gets shit on, then barged to Portland, loaded and unloaded two or three times before reaching the final destination. Go figure.

    The more I know about what I'm eating, the less I like to eat. Should go shoot a deer I quess. But surely our food and other products are of a higher quality than the Chinese. I wouldn't say that about the Japanese. China is just playing tit for tat with us here. They got to build some more bins though at Lewiston so the overflow doesn't go on the ground in a heavy harvest year. Gives one a bad feeling. Huge pile of wheat though. One year they did try to tarp it. I think they blend it in slow with that from the bins to meet standards, as the standards are higher than they used to be.

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  5. Here Doug, this will keep you ticked off.

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  6. Seems to me free trade is good to the extent it interlocks some nations mutually co-dependent so we don't all blow ourselves up.

    My man Joseph Campbell once said, if nothing else brings us together, the environmental crisis will. But he might be wrong, it might do just the opposite. I know some folks who would say there is never going to be an environmental crisis.

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  7. Sutton and Fitzpatrick should be shot in the back of the head at the base of the skull.
    Not that I hold any ill will toward feral prosecuting attorneys, mind you.

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  8. Fitzgerald?
    Some damn Irishman!

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  9. You eat them catfish raised in sewage in Red China, Double Al, I'll take the trash you catch flyfishin off your hands so it don't go to waste!

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  10. I would love to be third man in the boat when you two get around to do some fishing. I'll bring the beer.

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  11. I read something in connection w/that toothpaste article that said 58 folks died from Antifreeze being in something.
    Like AlBobAl says tho:
    Since were traders, lets be friends.
    Good fences make bad neighbors and etc!
    Paris for VP!

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  12. Time to see what "honest Al" has wrought in the prior thread.

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  13. Well I say this, toothpaste with a little anti-freeze in it might not be so bad around here in the winter. People that live around down by the equator would freeze to death here. We have a 'polar bear swim' New Year's Day, when we chew a hole in the ice in the lake with our teeth, and jump in buck naked.

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  14. Double Al likes to watch the Deer lick up the Anitfreeze, secure in the knowledge they are going DOWN.

    I'm for earth-friendly antifreeze Green Double Al, how about your?

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  15. Something needs to slow Chinese exports to -3% a year. Let's hope this can serve as a good start.

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