Turning a blind eye to product quality can be dangerous to your health. In June, the former head of China’s state food and drug agency became the ultimate object lesson: Zheng Xiaoyu, who ran the Chinese equivalent of the FDA for seven years, was actually executed for taking bribes and “dereliction of duty.” Chinese prosecutors maintained that under his watch, a host of people in Panama died from cough medicine laced with Chinese-origin toxins and more than a dozen babies in China perished from milk powder with no nutritional value. His demise is yet another bombshell of global outsourcing.
The risk to Americans doesn’t just come from goods imported here as Chinese products. Fifty-six percent of Chinese outsourcing is done for Japanese and Korean firms, and many of these products end up as components or finished goods sold in the States.
