Attention WalMart Shoppers

The finest in oral hygiene that makes you blind
From The New York Times:

Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said yesterday that the product appeared to have originated in China.

“Our preliminary information is that it came from China, but we don’t know that with certainty yet,” said Daniel Delgado Diamante, Panama’s director of customs. “We are still checking all the possible imports to see if there could be other shipments.”

Some of the toothpaste, which arrived several months ago in the free trade zone next to the Panama Canal, was re-exported to the Dominican Republic in seven shipments, customs officials said. A newspaper in Australia reported yesterday that one brand of the toothpaste had been found on supermarket shelves there and had been recalled.

Diethylene glycol is the same poison that the Panamanian government inadvertently mixed into cold medicine last year, killing at least 100 people. Records show that in that episode the poison, falsely labeled as glycerin, a harmless syrup, also originated in China.

There is no evidence that the tainted toothpaste is in the United States, according to American government officials.

This is not the first time that fraudulently labeled product from China has caused trouble. In addition to the tainted cough syrup mentioned in the Times article the tainted pet food which killed a good many animals because it was contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine originated in China.

The Chinese added the melamine to the vegetable products which are used in the production of the pet food in order to make it appear to have a higher protein content, giving it a higher sale price.

There are no private companies in China. Every business concern is either wholly owned by the Chinese government or has the government as a partner. These "anything we think we can get away with" business practices indicate that China is not a reliable trading partner.

I realize that the importation of inexpensive consumer products from China makes the average American's life better. However as long as the Chinese government engages in actions like these that we should deny them Most Favored Nation trading status (or normal trade relations as it is now called) and impose an extra tariff on Chinese imports in order to finance the extra inspections which are obviously necessary to ensure that Chinese goods are safe for American consumers.

Labels: China