Friends don't let friends eat farmed fish.

And lest you think this is some kind of nefarious FDA plot, realize that no one is more aggressively pursuing extremely destructive fish farming practices than Canada. BC in particular is putting their waters at risk in ways barely even dreamed of down here. Imagine Puget Sound filled wall-to-wall with fish farms. It's bad enough that we have the Atlantic Salmon farm over on Bainbridge (available at Whole Foods, it's "All Natural" but totally destructive) even without this melamine business.

I think a safety embargo on Chinese food products is in order. Those people play hardball, and they're crushing us with illegal and immoral techniques. Time to fight back. Sadly, the FDA is only interested in protecting them.

A poisoned food supply is a campaign issue; where are the Democrats on this?

"Melamine: If It Doesn't Kill You, It'll Make You Stronger. Just Like Vitamins."

Gotta love how fishing-industry propaganda against farmed seafood has worked its way up to a celebrity cause of the greenies....

Catfish is a farmed fish, and also one of the most sustainable fish you can eat (certainly better than anything dragged from the ocean floor). There are other examples of sustainably farmed fish.

Chinese sawdust or no, there are many good reasons to support fish farming.

Melamine! It's PLASTICILICIOUS!

Plus, the plates make good frisbees.

China's not the problem, though. The problem is that inspection on imported foods is basically non-existent. It's hard to regulate products being shipped from thousands of miles away, particularly when "free trade" agreements have little to no provision for such inspections and breaking the rules can result in punitive tarriffs depending upon a WTO ruling.

This is what happens when trade rules are made without consideration of consumer safety and environmental concerns. It's also what happens when low price trumps all other priorities in food production and consumption.

China's just the symptom, because they're one of the biggest producers. If China was cut out, other exporters would take their place. We need to change the entire global system of food production, regulation, and trade.

I'm not talking about catfish, A Nony Mouse. I'm talking about Atlantic salmon in Pacific waters, shitting the life out of the Sound. I'm talking about invasive species driving out natives.

It's all very well to talk about "the entire global system of food production, regulation, and trade" but it starts here. Most countries can't afford to do things the way we think they should. So what? We can. Forcing China -- by far the biggest fish -- to stop putting poison in their food and then shipping it here is a good first step.

Here's the thing, though. The only way to know for sure if melamine or anything else is in the food supply is to test for it. A blanket ban on all Chinese food products wouldn't get this done, because they could claim to be clean and go right on doing what they're doing right now. We need to test for it, without running afoul of the WTO. Since any test would raise the cost of Chinese food products, it could easily be argued that it's a hidden tarriff.

It's also quite possible that China would react to a ban or a testing regime targeted to their goods by selling to a third party that acts as reseller on the global market, getting around the ban.

So, yeah, go ahead and ban these products, and then institute testing of all imported products and not just those from China. But until the underlying trade agreements are renegotiated, it won't do a damn thing to protect the public.

boy, am i glad to be vegetarian right now...

What a novel idea, Cascadian! I agree: test our food. Nothing will bring the danger home quite like proving that our food contains melamine.

FNARF Wrote:
"I'm talking about invasive species driving out natives."

No Shit? Fnarf, you must be talking about hatchery salmon.

-- Jensen

Or people from places like Chicago,
New York and Oregon.

Also read Sundays NYTimes article about Chinese exporters selling glycol(antifreeze) as glycerin(ingredient in most medical liquids like cough syrup, vaccines etc). 1000s of people have died around the world because of this. Or yesterday's NYTimes about a mysterious illness in pigs in Southern China, causing them to hemorage to death.

About China, yes another country could possibly be doing these things,

But Right Now
What other country has the industrial capacity to perpertrate these scams?

What other country, besides BushUSA, has allowed rapacious cowboy capitalism to run so rampant? killing their own citizens?

What other country owns most of the debt of the United States and gets a free pass to do almost anything?

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