China’s Milk Kills: America’s Processed Food ____

As China comes out of it’s adolescence and moves toward a true free market it stumbles and rights itself. Chinese people aren’t bad or silly, two of them appear to be, and may face the death penalty. You see, two brothers have been arrested for selling contaminated milk.

My sense of justice has me delighted. My motherhood has me alarmed. The most recent number is 52,000. Fifty two thousand sick babies, 104,000 parents wondering what else they could have done. 208,000 grandparents praying over their children and their grandchildren. Communities in fear and businesses struggling to right themselves.

Two greedy men + one chemical additive = international chaos pain and death.

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When I stand in the aisles of the grocery store and demand that my children read the cereal labels before asking me if we can buy it, I feel like a crazy woman. I hate being afraid of food and additives, but these babies (who are no longer babies) were entrusted to me by the universe. What if the next Melamine is in Froot Loops? WTF is carnuba wax and why is it in a Tic Tac?

I put gas in my car and food in my children. I see food-like items on the shelves with ingredients I couldn’t possibly pronounce. I can’t love my kids and give them that. I won’t.

I don’t put chemicals into my children. Do I? Can we trust our labeling? Do you believe it when you see an Organic Stamp? Does some part of you think, “ooh, the farmer hid the hormones when the overseers came”.

I think it, sometimes, they’re fleeting thoughts, but the thoughts are there nonetheless.

How about today, in these last divisive days before our election, we look at our children and thank goodness that they’re safe. I’m grateful that my children are the USA and that I can trust our food sources to be as they say they are. It remains my responsibility to read the labels and allow only actual food to get into my children’s bodies. You see, the FDA and the California Legislature have failed our children miserably this year alone. Not everything sold at the grocery store is recognized by the human body as food.

Could this milk tragedy of occurred in the USA? In Canada? Are you satisfied that it’s been nipped in the bud?

Today I’m asking you, reader, to tell me what you think. So many of you are interested, we’re all riveted and appalled, horrified too. Please tell me that you’ve lost sleep too.

And please, say a prayer, of whatever sort feels best. Right now there are a lot of very tired, very sad families in China.

Jessica Gottlieb is a freelance writer in Los Angeles; this is an original post to Eco Child’s Play.

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