Absurd Singularity

While "Made in China" has replaced "Made in Taiwan" on practically everything that's manufactured in the last decade or so, there's still a whole group of items that I'm much more leery of purchasing if it came from China. That item? Food.

With the current pet food fiasco that just keeps expanding, Americans are finally catching a glimpse of what a good chunk of Asia (or at least Taiwan) already knows about China and food. Namely, calling some Chinese food manufacturers "unscrupulous" is probably the best thing one can say about them. My dad's been working in China for the last decade or so and every time he comes back he always tells us, "don't buy anything in the supermarket if it comes from China." Apparently it's widely known in China and Taiwan that Chinese food manufacturers can't be trusted. They'll try to pass off crap as edible if they can and have no qualms coating their products with chemicals in order to make them look better. They'll even pick up any old crap off the ground and try to pass it off as Chinese medicine. Then again, Chinese medicine does look like some guy just picked up crap off the ground in the first place. ;-p

So when I first heard that the investigation into the pet food contamination was delving into China, I wasn't surprised. And now that the FDA is starting to question whether or not the melamine contamination was deliberate, it won't surprise me either if it turns out to be so. Anyway, hopefully there'll be enough of a fallout from this that the Chinese companies get their act together but somehow, I doubt it.