Problem: Dangerous Chinese Food - Solution: Stop Buying It

From dead pets to poisonous toothpaste, the horror stories of deadly Chinese imports continue to pile up. People are furious, business looks the other way, Congress wrings its hands, FDA says it's not really their job, and Wal-Mart plays into Chinese corruption by working against inspections.

The only really effective thing we can do is to buy something else until China -- and Wal-Mart -- care about the problem. China has unhelpfully decided to kill the guy at the head of their food inspection and quality organization for taking bribes, but that's just barbaric political scapegoating. It will take an army of inspectors who care on both sides of the ocean to stop this blatant profiteering from unsafe foodstuffs. Meanwhile Wal-Mart tries to diguise its products' origins.

"As the world?s largest retailer, it distributes massive quantities of imported goods. Wal-Mart should use its significant clout with China and other importers to demand higher quality standards and more product testing. On the home front, Wal-Mart should stop fighting additional inspections and country-of-origin labeling, which would allow customers to know whether they are buying beef from Iowa or China. Wal-Mart should also consider returning to its abandoned 'Buy American' campaign and support U.S. manufacturers and local farmers rather than shifting jobs and purchases overseas."

"... American consumers we can use our purchasing power to influence how business responds to the challenge. Without assurances that imported goods are subject to rigorous inspections to ensure their safety, we can opt to buy locally grown and American-made products when we shop for groceries and other items each week. We can also decide that if we don?t know where a product comes from, maybe we don?t need it. Purchasing in such a manner not only supports local farmers and U.S. manufacturers, it protects consumers. It also provides the opportunity to strengthen our farm economy while protecting our food supply."

Someone should clue the Department of Homeland Security that weapons of mass destruction could be in those containers they don't inspect from China: E. coli, botulism, and lysteria, for starters. Instead, we have phone taps and shampoo confiscation, go figure. Let's bring the National Guard home from Iraq and put them back on the job, hmm? We could pay for it with the money that's now going to Blackwater and black-hole budgets.