Is The Recipe for Lame Duck and Peking Duck the Same?

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Is The Recipe for Lame Duck and Peking Duck the Same? US FDA Opens Offices in China to Investigate

 

FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach and Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt are in China to meet with officials about food safety. Yesterday, they opened a US FDA office in Beijing; two more are scheduled to open later this week. The new outposts are a response to the ongoing melamine contamination scandal, as well as the other recent Chinese contaminations of pet chow, food, toothpaste and medicines imported from China (most of the generic prescription drugs sold in the US are from China)."We're opening up a new era, not just new offices," Leavitt told the New York Times.Leavitt and von Eschenbach are also opening the US pocketbook and taking one last vacation with government $$, because both are scheduled to get the eff out of Dodge as President-elect Obama's new food safety appointees take over in January, when the real "new era" will begin.And isn't assigning US FDA agents to monitor food safety in China like sending a crack dealer to monitor Amy Winehouse's sobriety? FDA inspections have been disorganized, inefficient and ineffective, according to a September report from the US Government Accountability Office. Most recently, it took the US two months to catch up with the rest of the globe's monitoring of melamine contamination. "FDA's oversight and enforcement efforts have not kept pace with the growing number of food firms," the GAO report said, and called the FDA "lax, underfunded and understaffed." Under the current Apocalypse Chow system, we can barely track domestic food safety issues, and the US imported $320 BILLION of products from China in 2007; less than one percent of these products were inspected, according to FDA's own data."A permanent FDA presence in China will help us address the challenges presented by globalisation," von Eschenbach told journalists at the opening of the Beijing FDA branch, and added that the US plans to increase Chinese imports. A better idea? Ban all Chinese imports until the Chinese government has sorted out their monster problems, and demolish all melamine-contaminated products we know are here. More realistic? Stop wasting taxpayers' money on symbolic projects that are pointless, especially during the Transition. The next round of HSS and FDA appointees can address food safety, rather than the current Lame Duck evacuees who've created the current crisis.While in Beijing, we'd like to suggest that von Eschenbach and Leavitt visit the legendary Guo-li-zhuang restaurant, which serves a menu made entirely of animal members and testicles. They'll feel right at home, because man, they have balls.

 

http://haphazardgourmet.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-recipe-for-lame-duck-and-peking-duck.html

 

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