Chinese Toothpaste Is Wakeup Call

Recently we had hundreds of our cats and dogs dying from contaminated pet food.

And now we have millions of tubes of toothpaste containing, basically, antifreeze. Officially, it's diethylene glycol, also called DEG. Other toothpaste has been found to be full of harmful bacteria.

Thanks, China.

Some reports about the poisoned toothpaste said "trace amounts were found...."

Bullshit. The PR whores are spinning us. "Trace amounts" are what you get when you clean an industrial vat without rinsing adequately. Of if you washed your cooking pot and forgot to rinse it. Your next batch of spaghetti might have a soap taste. We're talking fraction of a percent. But tests on this toothpaste have shown levels as high as 13 percent!

WAKE UP, this is nothing new! In recent weeks, Chinese toothpaste carrying various different brands, containing diethylene glycol, was found in Panama, the Dominican Republic and Australia.

Get the picture? This is no accident. Thirteen percent is no "trace amount". Nobody forgot to clean the tube-filling machine. It's simple--diethylene glycol has a sweet taste, and they deliberately use it to sweeten and blend the mix, because it's cheap, and they probably had lots of it on hand.

Ask yourself: If somebody is willing to deliberately use a poisonous substance as a sweetener, what else are they willing to do? Would it be possible that they make up the "toothpaste" using nice silt from the mouth of the Yangtze river? Maybe it's nice gritty stuff. Add some bleach, to whiten it.

But don't stop there. If somebody is willing to add poison to your toothpaste, and to your cat food, what else would they do?

Consider:

a) we don't know what crap is being added to imported products. It's impossible to test everything.

b) Obviously there are people who are happy to risk the lives of customers when it suits them. Morals or ethics or scruples do not come into play.

What to do?

First, it would be nice if governments in USA and Canada would require labeling like "this product contains ingredients from China". Or, tame it down a bit: "this product contains one or more imported ingredients".

But that's not going to happen.

So what can YOU do? Use the power of email. Once upon a time you had to find paper, and a pen, and an envelope, and buy a stamp... Now you type and click--it's soooo easy. Grab your bottle of shampoo, or toothpaste, or mouthwash, or whatever (things that you either ingest, or put onto your body), and email the company whose name is predominant on the label. Try this:

Dear sir: I am using your (product name) which has a UPC code of (xxxxx). Please let me know if this product contains ANY ingredients which originated in China.

First of all, you protect yourself with some knowledge about whatever you're ingesting, and secondly, you are putting corporations on notice that you care, and you're watching.