Whether China is responsible or not should be a moot point. Do we not have agencies like CFIA that are supposed to check all products coming into Canada? A few years ago it was discovered that honey from China was contaminated with a fungicide. We stopped importing that honey. A while later honey was bweing imported into Canada from countries that had never exported honey before. Alberta was the only the only province that inspected that honey and found that it to was contaminated with the fungicide--China was re-routing honey to other countries to be sold abroad. The ROC continued to import honey from those countries. So, instead of blaming China we should be asking why this contaminated product was allowed to be distributed in the first place. This proves that our system is weak in that department, and it is us who are really responsible for this devestation.

Posted by: George at April 5, 2007 01:45 PM

Wow George!

Bit of a masochist, are we? China poisons us and we're responsible???

You sure seem to hate yourself, and whatever countries you mean by "our system" Anyway, you might as well flog yourself as well.

That's

Posted by: Larry at April 5, 2007 06:43 PM

Do we not have agencies like CFIA that are supposed to check all products coming into Canada?

Er, not as such. But we have lots of agencies which are very good at getting great jobs for lots of their buddies, crafting pay and benefits packages which are an order of magnitude better than the average schmoe whom they are allegedly dedicated to protecting, siphoning off money to favored contractors, and then double-dipping when they retire and get jobs with the contractors or even with their old agency. Oh yes, and turning all of their failures into a demand for bigger budgets, bigger salaries, bigger headcounts, more foreign trips to "study" and "share information", more cars, computers and other toys, more regulatory power, etc. And when they screw up, there is always a loud chorus backing them up by screaming that government should "do more!" It's a beautiful scam, is it not?

Then there are private producers and entrepreneurs whose jobs and property are on the line and who have 100% motivation to not screw up and not poison their customers. No one has to tell them to "do something", they're busting their butts every day to do their best, and no one is going to give them a promotion, a new office or lend them more money if they screw up (except maybe a government loan, by hinting that the votes in their riding are up for grabs)

I'd trust a greedy capitalist who can only make money by selling me something I need and by not poisoning me before I'd trust an unfireable government knob crying crocodile tears and posing as my servant, anyday.

Posted by: at April 5, 2007 06:46 PM

06:46pm--exactly--I would trust the producer to protect us better than the government stooges we pay to 'protect' us. At the same time--these government departments plead ignorance every time something like this happens. They are totally unaccountable to anyone, and the only thing they excel at is pointing the finger at others, eg--the farmer who fed the wrong feed or the animals/food product that is imported into Canada was contaminated before being imported so it is not their fault. They spin their wheels and waste our money on their useless make work projects to enhance their own importance. But as usual we are pay and receive nothing in return.
Health Canada has the same track record. I am not absolving China of responsibility, but at the same time we have to ask the pertinent question of why on earth we are importing wheat gluten, or any grain product for that matter, into Canada at the expense of our own farmers.
Either we get real with inspections and accountability or we only use home-grown products in human and animal food products and only import that which we cannot produce ourselves.

Posted by: George at April 5, 2007 07:46 PM

The chinese also denied any knowledge of SARS, until international pressure forced them to 'fess up.

So the same lying, communist/totalitarian government denies any wrongdoing in the tainted pet food issue.

And anybody is surprised because... (?)

mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm

Posted by: mhb at April 6, 2007 12:27 PM

The Chinese government also denies responsibility for the massacre that occurred on June 04, 1989. Nothing they do or which is done there ever seems to be their fault.

Posted by: Brian in Calgary at April 6, 2007 03:48 PM

They are not responsible in the same way Chretien and Martin were not responsible for adscam.

Posted by: DrWright at April 7, 2007 10:33 AM

So the same lying, communist/totalitarian government denies any wrongdoing in the tainted pet food issue.

And anybody is surprised because... (?)

The only really surprising thing is that otherwise intelligent, alert people would fail to see that the same logical fallacies and the same pernicious inducements to lie and steal are built into both the Chinese government and their own government. Regardless of which party's hacks and fixers are calling the shots and regardless of how many elections are called.

Posted by: at April 7, 2007 02:03 PM

Anon at April 7,2007, 2:03pm:

Sorry, I missed the part of your historical reference or reasoning that compared problems with the Canadian Federal Government with China, viz. (i) Denying massacring its citizens for public assembly and (ii) Lying on a worldwide scale by denying the country's infection from a fatal inhaled respiratory disease.

Be a dear and clear that up for us, would you?

If you fail to see the difference between Canada (admittedly with its own political warts) and China, you're living in the wrong country, Bubba.

mhb23re

Posted by: mhb at April 8, 2007 10:16 PM