Cursed Tongue: Dying of Consumption

Posted by CursedTongue on July 1, 2007

Is China exporting substandard goods as a painful, lengthy form of low-level warfare? In the past six months the U.S. has received tainted dog food ingredients, tainted discount store toothpaste, Thomas the Tank Engine toys painted with lead paint, tires with inconveniently omitted gum strips securing the tread and culinary torches that leak butane. The laundry list continues, but I’m sure you have other things to do today.

Could these attacks on consumers be a concerted effort to stop the spread of capitalism and democracy? It does seem, at the very least, that China has it out for our beloved pets, our bratty children, our economic underclass and people who spent $40 on a pathetic, feeble torch for crème brulee in a snooty shop instead of spending $25 on a real one from a hardware store.

Unfortunately, the oversight and regulatory bureaus in China are as effective as those leaky culinary torches. It’s as much of a surprise that China produces crap as that American buy it. China has always produced crap. It’s cheap, it’s plastic and it’s made in China.

I’d be more worried about China’s evil intentions, were Chinese food producers not also poisoning their own people. Baby formula with no nutritional value and a myriad of food containing contaminants have put Chinese consumers on the defensive, too. One reporter exposed an eatery in China that dissolved dumpster recovered cardboard in solvent, added fatty pork and MSG and voila: steamed buns and chips.

But just because China isn’t singling out the U.S. and Canada, doesn’t mean I’m not checking labels for place of origin. Made in South Africa or “Hecho en Mexico” could still be hazardous. Even dangerous products made in the good old U S of A can slip under the radar. But China is responsible for 60% of recalls in the U.S.

China’s “A little diethylene glycol never hurt anyone,” attitude is disturbing to say the least. They did eventually ban the use of toxic, viscous liquid in toothpaste. But not before complaining about a U.S . recall of the contaminated toothpaste.

Colored by the American mythos of the scary Commie state, my vision of China is that of an overbearing parent to its citizens. An oppressive government looking over the shoulders of residents, making sure they are being good little Maoist boys and girls. A “big brother,” if you will. But it seems the opposite is true. In a land of generations and generations of only children the “me first” attitude has seized China. Corporations bully police and officials. They do as they please. They hold American reporters hostage for nine hours. And you thought American children were entitled brats.

Last week, the former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, supposedly an agency already in place to regulate the manufacture of food and drugs in China, was executed for taking bribes. It may seem like harsh punishment for a white-collar crime, but I think our system of government might have had more credibility if they had executed Mike Brown, former director of the still impotent FEMA. I’m not saying that Brown deserved to die for being unreservedly incompetent. I am merely pointing out that the current director of FEMA would put a lot more effort into the job of assisting U.S. disaster victims if Brown had actually been held accountable for rolling up the sleeves of his Nordstrom’s dress shirt for the cameras and considering it a job well done.

The problem with regulating producers of food, toys and other consumer goods in China is that there are millions of them and they tend to be small operations. Manufacturers and growers have not come to the realization that a dead customer might have trouble purchasing their fine products.

But the task of forcing Chinese businesses to produce quality consumer goods can be accomplished. Just ask millions of Americans who recently purchased fireworks to celebrate Independence Day and didn’t die as a result of faulty product. Importers of fireworks in the U.S. paid for their own lab in China to test products before exportation. Chinese producers of fireworks at first resented having the capitalist pig-dog organization, the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory (AFSL), monitoring their production of recreational explosives. But encouraging them to refine their production has boosted sales in the U.S. Meanwhile, injury rates among Americans of questionable intelligence who set off fireworks has dropped by two-thirds.

If a nation with less teenagers and rednecks who are missing limbs and fingers isn’t a success story, then I don’t know what is.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: health, humor, politics

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