Ban All Imports of Chinese Food

I just heard a report on NPR about how this melamine thing in the wheat gluten is not an isolated problem. They are exporting eggs that have had their yolks dyed with shoe polish, rice coated in machine oil and infant formula with no nutritional value whatsoever. Fake medicines that are not what they have been labelled as.

Enough. Enough, enough, enough. Why are we allowing any food products to be imported into the United States from China? At the merest mention of the words 'mad cow disease,' other countries cut off imports of American beef. Perfectly safe drugs from Canada are kept out of the US on the basis of trumped-up safety questions. Yet toxic plastics systematically dumped into wheat gluten are somehow acceptable? Rice coated in machine oil? Infant formula that could lead to starvation and malnurishment?

Enough. It is way past time that the United States put our foot down and prohibit the importation of any and all food products from China. We have had unreasonably liberal trade policies with this country for too long. China has taken this trust we have placed in them and they have utterly betrayed it. We simply cannot allow unlimited trade in goods that affect the literal health of the US with a country which has safety and honesty standards so pitifully low compared to ours.

This is the same China that dumps illegally pirated DVDs, software and other consumer goods on to the American market. The same China that throws people in prison for going to churches that aren't state sanctioned. The same China that held a dozen American airmen hostage in 2001 after their plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan island. What exactly does anyone think that we owe these people?

All I can figure is that George W. Bush must be some kind of coward not to stand up to China on America's behalf. He is the executive. He is the chief diplomat and the Commander in Chief. And he is the one who lets China crap all over the United States at every opportunity. Whose President is he, anyway? Whose interests is it his job to protect? America or China? I'm waiting for the answer.