The chickens have come home to roost. Global warming, pshaw! We are being poisoned daily not so slowly. The FDA inspects only a fraction of imported foods, and most of what they inspect is toxic. According to a number of stories in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Chinese entrepreneurs used melamine, an industrial byproduct that mimics their test for nitrogen, as an ingredient in wheat gluten which somehow found its way into pet food. Hundreds of dogs and cats died of kidney failure and estimates say the number affected is far higher. The FDA is silent on how many ingredients like these are inside so-called "human" food.
The Chinese also put antifreeze in cough syrup and children's toothpast because anti-freeze is sweet. It mimics the usual sweetener used in those types of products, glycerin. Why would they poison their customers? Because melamine and antifreeze are cheaper than the alternatives.
The FDA recalled frozen fish that was labeled "monkfish" but was actually pufferfish, which can contain a deadly neurotoxin. This was only discovered after the fact, when people fell ill.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not blaming just the Chinese. They do, however, try to hide the origin of products using forged documents and "laundering" exports through third-party countries. The problem is also right here at home.
The FDA can't protect us. They have a limited budget which is supplemented by pharmaceutical companies. This is not the case with the USDA. They inspect much more frequently and their budget is not dependent on the largess of the industries it's regulating.
The problem with toxic globalization is U.S. policy which encourages globalization yet shies away from multilateral agreements, i.e. the Kyoto Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the Geneva Conventions. To the U.S., "globalization" is just a code word for "cheap labor".
According to the late economist Milton Friedman, guru to the right, government has no place regulating any business, that all parties in an economic transation will act out of enlightened self-interest, thereby assuring all involved of the best for less. In other words, there is no need to monitor in the people's interests because selfishness (sorry, enlightened self-interest) leads to the best outcome for all involved.
Do you believe it?