Angry in the Great White North

The issue of contaminated Chinese toothpastes is especially important in Vancouver's Chinatown:

Poisonous toothpaste from China was for sale in the Lower Mainland as recently as two weeks ago, and Health Canada officials are urging anyone who bought the toothpaste not to use it and to return it to retailers immediately.

Since then, any retailers carrying the toothpaste have been asked to return it to their suppliers A number of merchants in Vancouver's Chinatown said today they knew about the toothpaste, and that's why it's no longer for sale there.

"They're already gone," Kevin Chen of the T&T Supermarket said when he was shown pictures of some of the brands in question. "We knew they were not good."

The Vancouver Sun interviewed many merchants, all of whom had removed the product from the shelves, often ahead of the official Health Canada warning on Chinese toothpastes.

But consider how the toothpaste got into the stores in the first place. Despite the warnings and the import bans, there are people who are still moving this product into Canada:

But Derick Cheng of the Corning Pharmacy on Main said he wasn't surprised by the toothpaste discovery. He said more and more Chinatown merchants are becoming concerned about the safety of some Chinese products, including soy sauce, rice noodles, fish, vegetables and fruit, which, he said, may contain traces of insecticide.

He said some independent importers will attempt to woo retailers with an especially low price for a product, but this is when retailers get into trouble.

"They are not genuine licensed importers we know. Some of them are quite fishy," Cheng said.

Not a genuine licensed importer? Isn't that another word for smuggler? The work of organized crime, even, with gangs working in both Canada and China? It'll be interesting to see if the RCMP investigation goes in that direction.

Hat tip to Lance.