Life has always been cheap in mainland communist China. During dictator Mao Zedong's post-World War II Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, some 60 million Chinese are believed to have died—perhaps 20 million due to starvation, the remainder in purges of Mao's political opponents resisting his Marxist tyranny.
The low regard for life is showing up in China's indifference to food safety. But that can't explain the U.S. government's lax inspection of imported foods.
The first frightful evidence of U.S. indifference came when Chinese entrepreneurs successfully exploited the U.S. food industry's yen for cheap additives by peddling a protein substitute, melamine, to American pet food companies. The result was widespread pet sickness and death.
Then, an Ohio-based company was found to have used melamine in food fed to livestock and fish destined for human consumption.
This week, the Food and Drug Administration warned Americans to avoid China-produced toothpaste that could contain ingredients used in anti-freeze.
Americans have no reason to feel relieved that the FDA blocked the Chinese toothpaste and melamine risks. These were lucky catches in a system that allows the American food market to be flooded with untested, unchecked and possibly unhealthful foods and additives.
The underfunded, understaffed FDA checks or tests only 1 percent of all imported food and only about 2 percent of the 81 percent of imported seafood in the U.S.
Of seafood rejected in sample FDA tests, 60 percent came from China. With Americans eating more than 16 pounds of seafood per person per year), 20 percent of the 76 million annual cases of food-caused illnesses involve seafood.
Americans cannot rely on the Chinese, to guarantee the safety of its food exports. So, rather than allow U.S. consumers to be used as guinea pigs, Washington must enlarge FDA's inspection system and crack down hard on suspicious imports.
Because China is a preferred trading partner doesn't entitle it to risk the lives of Americans with poisonous food or additives.
