U. S. Too Wimpy
To Protect Food

It seems that the United States is showing its colors as being a wimp nation on one hand and a bully on the other.

Recently, we the people were allowed into the loop, to discover what has been making our pets sick and causing death to many. Pet foods containing poison, exported by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), ultimately incorporated into our pet food. Next we learned about toothpaste containing another dangerous contaminate, besides fluoride, (the ADA-sanctioned poison) imported from the PRC .

Now we hear about seafood products being fished from contaminated waters. I for one returned the balance of smoked oysters, in cottonseed oil imported from the PRC. Oysters are bivalves that probably came from some sewage ditch, smoked and then smothered in oil whose plants were sprayed with some restricted use chemical.

Then there is the key primary ingredient used to make practically all vitamin C supplements, Ascorbic acid, imported from the PRC. Ascorbic acid is also used as a preservative in food processing.

Apple sauce used by Chinese restaurants to make duck sauce, imported from PRC. I dare not tell the true story about the manufacture of wooden chopsticks that people enjoy eating their food with.

And lastly for this tirade there is the importation of ceramic tableware from The PRC. The China Commodity Inspection Bureaus (CCIBs or CIQs) provides our FDA with "reasonable assurance that ceramicware produced in the PRC , exported to the US satisfy FDA action levels for leachable lead and cadmium."

Maybe someone could tell me what those gray marks are on the bottom of coffee mugs, when stirred with a teaspoon. Is it lead being liberated from the glaze? Remember the recall, several years ago, of baby teething toys from the PRC, filled with contaminated water. And the beat goes on.

Being wimps, we dare not close our markets, however unsafe the product , to the PRC as they control our money. On the other hand when our good neighbor to the north, Canada shipped in a cow that allegedly had BSE, the U.S. placed an embargo on the importation of Canadian livestock. We bully Canada since we can without fear and dare not place an embargo on the PRC, because they can bully us.

Stewart Skrill

Randolph