Sauce for the goose

When the Chinese sent us cheap but lead-filled toys and cheap but antifreeze contaminated wheat gluten and toothpaste, we were outraged. We should have been. There appears to be little effective product safety regulation by the Chinese government, though dip into the wrong till and the same government will bill your family for your bullet.

Will we be equally outraged at General Mills in Ohio for filling our freezers and our stomachs with E. coli? 'Cause I have to tell you, food safety regulation in this country is pretty weak even when Democrats or responsible Republicans (oxymoron!) are in charge, and right now we have a bunch of caveat emptor advocates sleeping at the switch. Like the Chinese government, the Bushist lackeys take as their overwhelming interest the protection of money and those who already have it.

One step toward greater food safety would be to outlaw subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics in farm animals. At least, that would help retain antibiotic effectiveness for humans who become acutely ill from mishandling of meat. But I suspect it would also reduce the frequency of virulent strains such as E. coli O157:H7. (Of course, outbreaks, even vegetable contaminations, are about mishandling of cow shit, mostly.)

I find this parallel to the wheat gluten scandal to be sickly funny:

It said the pepperoni came from a separate supplier, not produced at the plant itself, but it declined to release the name of the pepperoni distributor.

Remember how outrageous it was that the Chinese companies wouldn't provide any information and their government wouldn't force them to? Now they have company.