Every time you hear the tired old predictions that China is growing at an interminable rate and will soon over take the United States in many areas, remind yourself that this is just a myth. China is not 30 years behind the United States. The reality is: China is still in the dark ages, they just have cars everywhere.
In retaliation for stopping imports of its tainted goods, China has blocked shipments of pork ribs and other meat products from the U.S.. It may simply be an act of retaliation in the already tense trade relations between the two nations. You can read more on this in the L.A. Times article: China heats up food battle.
For some time food safety hasn’t been a high priority in China. On the same day as the L.A. Times article, CNN reports that Chinese are trucking live rats from rodent infested Hunan Province to restaurants in Guangdong where diners can’t get enough of these savory delights. Please read on.
CNN reports that:
Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported 2 billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.
Rat vendors had been doing a roaring trade thanks to strong supply over the last two weeks, the China News Service quoted vendors as saying.
“Recently there have been a lot of rats… Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good,” it quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province, where people are reputed to eat anything that moves.
Some Guangdong restaurants were promoting “rat banquets”, charging 136 yuan ($18) for one kilogram of rat meat, the newspaper said.
Local governments in Hunan have been grappling with the rats, which had already destroyed 1.6 million hectares (6,200 sq miles) of crops and could spread disease, according to media reports.
Scientists have also blamed China’s massive Three Gorges Dam project and climate change for the Hunan rodents’ flight to dry land.
The complete CNN story is Chinese ‘trucking’ live rats to southern restaurants.
As the Chinese respond to U.S. concerns over food safety in a tit-for-tat measure, remember that a Chinese restaurant would just as soon serve rat meat from a plague infested region as it would imported pork chops. All this in the same week that the government insisted food will be safe for Olympic athletes, and state media uncovered food made in Beijing with cardboard filler instead of meat. It will be a while yet before they catch up to the U.S..
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