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.
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.
i am becoming obsessed about this. i am disgusted by our FDA and EPA. my latest obsession is about the BPA in cans! it is everywhere. who doesn’t use canned foods….beans, tomatoes, etc. i have a 16 month old, and i want to do the right thing for my family. how?
Eden brand cans are BPA free, except the tomatoes.
http://eyr.lil.mybluehost.me/2007/10/08/canned-food-and-bpa/
Dear Jessica G,
If you would like to learn all you ever wanted (and didn’t want) to know about food in this country- where it comes from, what these unpronounceable additives really are, what organic really means, etc.- I highly recommend you read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It is a thoroughly researched account of how processed foods make it from the soil to the dinner table, and every step in between. I recommend this book to any parent concerned and/or confused about what is safe for them and their children to eat.
I wish I could trust lables to tell me all that is in the package but I can’t. FDA has indeed failed us and the oversight is hardly there so we are left to trust that the producers are not lying. All the fresh food contamination we have had lately make me weary especially the beef from sick animals. I have started growing much of what I eat in my city lot and rarely buy processed food. I am retired and I can do that but most people can’t. My number one concern are the chemicals used to grow food, those are not listed so who knows what we are eating. What can we do when we can’t trust our own agencies to protect us?
All the additives in prossessed food are an expence, does it make any sense for additives to be used if they were not nessesary? Granted there are some such as the red dye used to make packaged meat look red are questionable, but most of them allow millions of apartment dwellers to eat with out having to work their own farm lands.
Chemists and other scientific types will look down their noses and try to tell you that there is no difference between a molecule created using Corn or another grain as “feedstock,” and the real thing. This is not so.
Always remind those scientific types that they only know what was taught to them. They do not know everything. There is no substitute for the real thing from its natural source. Accept nothing less.
I wish this was an easier thing to do.
Dear Jessica,
Great post! China’s contaminated milk, America’s processed foods with “spices” listed in ingredients, as spices. Dried herbs as we all might think, but these spices are at least 15 dangerous chemicals fabricated for a better taste and boost of appetite. You did not mention children’s toys MADE IN CHINA. These toys are painted with another killer-ingredient–lead. Our children taste their toys as we, adults, taste our food. Look at my blog, http://www.mamashomeremedies.com I am concerned about these issues, too.
Please look at your foods your buying ecspecially childrens candy in america alot of it is china some mexico. Think about it our own FDA can not police a peanut supplier in the US , how can they protect us from foreign suppliers.