There seems no end to the growing list of Chinese products being banned by the US government because they contain deadly toxins.
[Caribbean importing Chinese products banned in the USA, TIJ, August 17, 2007]
Given the alarms raised in recent years about contaminated Chinese products, one can be forgiven the impression that the contaminated peanut butter that has killed 8 and sickened hundreds over the past few months was imported from China.
In fact, the salmonella-laced peanut butter, which has contaminated everything from cookies to ice cream, was produced right here in the USA. Federal officials have traced it to a Blakely, Georgia plant of the Peanut Butter Corp. of America, which sells its products to schools, hospitals and nursing homes all over the country.
If you think about where salmonella comes from, it lives in the intestinal track of warm-blooded animals. It’s coming from fecal matter.
(Catherine Donnelly, a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont in Burlington.)
Meanwhile, I always thought the indignant alarms raised about Chinese products smacked of hypocrisy – especially given the terror incited by contaminated American tomatoes, spinach and beef in recent years.
Yet even I am stunned that – with all of the food-safety regulations supposedly in place – an American company could get away with distributing an all-American staple like peanut butter laced with feces all over the country.
At any rate, this latest outbreak should compel America to do more to ensure the safety of its own products before lecturing others with such self-righteousness in this regard.
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