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When we're shopping these days, I carefully watch the labels on the products. It's surprising how many of them say "Product of China" on them, and so many of the canned seafood items are from there now. Sorry, this is not a case of unwarranted China-bashing, but I just don't trust their food products. I think the only thing in the mind of the Chinese manufacturers is to make money the easiest, sleaziest way they can. It's my opinion that they really don't care about the consequences; if they can find some bogus ingredient that's cheaper but possibly harmful, they don't care as long as it makes them more money.

Of course, this philosophy doesn't apply strictly to the Chinese, witness the peanut processor down in Georgia, wasn't it, who kept up production knowing that his stuff was tainted? We rant and rail against our lawsuit-happy society, but in many ways threat of lawsuit may keep some manufacturers honest whereas it isn't much of a bother in China.

With bulk agricultural products imported from China, we don't have much control over from the position of an individual consumer. We just don't know the origin of every single ingredient. It's worrying.

There was a good one not long ago about honey. Pure, healthy, golden honey. Well, it seems that local producers were taking their locally-grown product and mixing it with larger and much cheaper quantities of bulk honey from China. Some of this imported honey is tainted with antibiotics. Some of it is shipped first to Australia, then to the US; some of this is identified as being Australian, some is simply relabeled as being a product of the US. I can picture Joe Carrotjuice, a vegan, buying organic foods and substituting "pure", organic honey rather than eating poisonous, horrible cane sugar (or worse!! Evil Corn Syrup!!). So here Joe is eating honey and filling up on antibiotics.

One last funny, not-so-funny one. A few years ago, there was an old geezer in northern California who had the distinction of being one of the oldest guys around when he died, something over 100. During an interview before he died, they asked him what he might have eaten for his diet that had provided him with this gift of longevity. He replied that for the last 30 years, he'd mostly eaten pancakes and bacon.