Reading China Rx - Part Two

I'm about 28% of the way through the book. The chapter that currently has my eye is chapter 7 - dealing with chicken and beef sales during the Obama years.

It didn't start with Obama, but he didn't help America in the process of negotiating with China.

The problems are these:

• Chinese food processing is notoriously filthy, uses levels of antibiotics that are not permitted in the USA, and actively works with the Chinese government to evade food inspections at the plants.
• The Chinese played Divide and Conquer with the meat industry - they pitted the beef industry against the chicken industry, and strong-armed the FDA to approve import of chicken for the bribe of getting our beef producers to get a foothold in China.
• The Chinese pretended that wild bird pathogens posed a danger to our farm-raised chicken, while ignoring the many pathogens that have infested Chinese chicken farms. So, they used that pretense to keep our chicken out, while pressuring the USA to accept their chicken.
• One of the compromises that the USA made was to allow US-grown chicken to be shipped to China to be processed into patties, fingers, and nuggets, then shipped back to us. Of course, the Chinese assured the US that they would ONLY use the American-grown chicken in the final product. Right. We can completely trust the word of the Chinese government and business community - /sarc.

Why is chicken important?

Because the political maneuvering, pressure, and evasions of law and regulations that made use of Chinese facilities to process chicken a bad idea, also apply to allowing medications to be made in China. Inspections of foreign plants was eased in an agreement that was meant to facilitate trade with the EU. That agreement may be used - what do I meant MAY - it WILL - to allow China to bypass meaningful inspection of their drug processing plants.

And, that will likely kill a few Americans, and cause others to become sicker then they should have been.

But, hey, cheap drugs!

Links to other posts about China Rx:

Reading China RX Intro

Reading China Rx - Part One

China Rx Update