Pay now or pay later....
MADE IN CHINA
Posted on 7/10/2007, 3:10:50 AM by DeaconBenjamin2
A senior Chinese food regulator has warned that problems with food safety in the country could cause diseases and threaten social stability.
Sun Xiande, head of the food safety department at the government’s main food and drug agency, admitted that the country’s credibility in international markets had been threatened by a spate of health scares in the US about Chinese food products.
“Especially in the countryside, the food safety situation is not optimistic. Hidden threats will gradually emerge and diseases will likely gradually occur due to the harmful ingredients in food,” he said, in unusually blunt remarks reported in the Chinese media.
“Food safety accidents or events will not only affect the healthy development of the entire [food] industry, but also possibly affect the local economy and social stability,” he said.
His comments were a rare admission from Beijing that the country’s food safety system contained enormous weaknesses that were putting consumers at risk. Mr Sun, a director at the State Food and Drug Administration, warned that a series of product recalls involving exports or ingredients originating in China could have a lasting effect on the country’s food sector.
“Our country is facing a period with high risks for food safety,” he said. “The food security problems have impeded Chinese agriculture products and food many times in international trade, and damaged our national credibility and image.” He admitted that the Chinese authorities faced an “arduous task” restoring the reputation of the country’s exports.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
What China is going thru is what the US went thru in the early Industrial Revolution. Lesson learn is that if you give the merchant class minimum reg and max freedom, sooner or later they will not hesitate to cut corners to make a buck. Difference in the US experience is that it spurned opposition politicians and reforms. China’s problem is many of these merchants are related to government officials. Accusing them would involve the citizen pointing fingers at the collaborating government official, which in China makes you vulnerable to the official charging you with attempt to subvert the government and having you arrested.
ping
What China is going thru is what the US went thru in the early Industrial Revolution.
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Nonsense.
The known facts and known risks have been available to China for a long long time......this is quite different than when they were discovered long ago.
In china today, it is purely a matter of indifference to human (and pet) health for a few extra pennies in profit. This is entirely a matter of ethics and criminality.
Ever read Pres Theodore Roosevelt’s admin, the domestic issues he had to deal with pertaining to labor safety, child labor laws, food safety, etc, etc, etc. Why do you think these government regs came into existance? What do you think the railroad, steel, auto, cattle, lumber, coal, and oil barons did to their small competitors when they want to gobble up their companies. Read the ruthless tactics of the Rockefellars, Carnegie, Ford and etc. Bill Gates is a pussy cat compared to them. Atleast he did not hire private detectives, bribe local judges, zoning boards and etc to drive small business into financial ruin or resorted to arson/thuggery. There are many parallels between early US industrial revolution history and China’s capitalist economic experiment. In my many years of observing the world I conclude the following. Desire for American style democracy is not universal (some societies must deal with security over freedom), but the individual desire for power and wealth is univeral (from underdeveloped Africa to runaway capitalism in Asia). China is practicing unregulated capitalism (because many regs are ignored due to the participation of many party officials and officials’ families). Give a merchant unfettered freedom, sooner or later he will cut corners to make a buck.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/07/09/EDMEYER.DTL
please don’t hand me China’s current talking-points, and stop asking me to believe that they don’t know the facts. This is their choice, every bit as much as it is their choice to use slave labor. They (you to??) want us to pretend to believe that they are emerging from the dark ages in the tech world?
Save your breath. This is about cynical and criminal character, and nothing else.
thanks, bfl
I am missing something. My post is not a pro Chinese post. Our early Industrial Revolution history is available for all of us to read and study. Officials collaborating with merchants to cut corners and making a buck is nothing new in human history. It is called greed. Bad food, unsafe working conditions, child labor happened in our turn of the century society. The difference between China and late 19th Century America, is the Americans can go to the political opposition to protest and implement reforms. The barons of industry cannot nullify the reforms desired American majority as they elect reform politicians. The Chinese workers do not have this right because the corrupt government official can always fall back on national security and arrest the protestors as counter revolutionaries.
China is every bit communist as they ever were.
No respect for life.
During the industrial revolution we didn’t even have
refrigeration in homes.
Instead of building sewerage treatment plants they
are building nuclear sub's with ICBMs.
The only hope I have is they are using the same crappy
parts and components that they are dumping over here
to build them with.
China, still every bit as communist red as they ever were
just coated with red white and blue icing from
our one way free trade.
What do you have against everyday low prices?
Our early Industrial Revolution history is available for all of us to read and study.
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and so is every bit of data compiled over the years.....we have educated a million or more chinese, a good percentage of them in health and chemistry disciplines.....get off the industrial revolution kick, it doesn’t wash. The Olympics has a very good chance of being a flop, attendance-wise, because of this food issue, and if it flops it will be their own doing :)
The culture of China is chronically nervous whenever “social stability” problems raise their threatening head. This may be the thing that will put a sufficient burr beneath their behinds to fix the problem.
You don’t think the US had unsafe factories, child labor, tainted canned goods/food, predatory practices during the late 19th Century during the Industrial Revolution????
What burns me to the core...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/82ce0740-2c03-11dc-b498-000b5df10621.html
Meet the new commie, (China) same as the old commie.
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