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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Mass Poisoning of Chinese Hospital Restaurant Patrons |
| 2007-04-10 |
| Harbin, Heilongjiang, PRC -- One person died and more than 200 people fell sick after eating food that may have been contaminated with rat poison at a hospital restaurant in northeastern China. Mass poisonings are common in China, which has been struggling to improve a dismal food safety record. Manufacturers often mislabel food products or add illegal substances to them. Cooks routinely disregard hygiene rules or mistakenly use industrial chemicals instead of salt and other ingredients. And we think US hospital food is bad |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #14 ... the only way you can get ahead is by screwing the other guy. This is known as the "zero sum equation". It's a well understood and feeble rationale that communists and other ineffectual wankers use as an excuse to raid the wealth of individuals who actually earn it. Pay no attention to the bandit behind the curtain. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-04-10 21:28 |
| #13 gorb: Anybody out there know what sort of psychology leads the folks in China to keep doing this? Is it some sort of disgruntled worker thing? There's this understanding in China that the only way you can get ahead is by screwing the other guy. At root, this is the source of some of the problems people encounter with Chinese products - sticking it to the customer is just an extension of this philosophy. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2007-04-10 20:42 |
| #12 Think we can export Torte Lawyers to China? Sorta balance out that trade deficit thingy by exchanging surpluses? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-04-10 19:49 |
| #11 John and Zenster, you beat me to it. |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2007-04-10 14:47 |
| #10 Saw an interesting comment at another discussion board about how the contaminated Chinese gluten that killed so many American pets might have been a probe for a larger scale attack on humans. As to this incident in China, it is a fatal intersection of the cheapness of human life with illiteracy and a profit motive unfettered by scruples or ethics. In reality, it all boils down to the cheapness of human life as that leads to the other issues. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-04-10 14:15 |
| #9 It could also be another business trying to sabotage a competitor's restaurant to get the hospital contract. |
| Posted by: danking_70 2007-04-10 13:04 |
| #8 They call it hospital food, we import it as pet food. |
| Posted by: john 2007-04-10 12:42 |
| #7 Anybody out there know what sort of psychology leads the folks in China to keep doing this? Is it some sort of disgruntled worker thing? No, it is an illiterate worker thing! Combined with the storing of non-food related items adjacent to food items and similar labeling. |
| Posted by: Natural Law 2007-04-10 11:33 |
| #6 Not true, NME. Leftists always remain credible no matter how many times they are caught lying. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2007-04-10 08:24 |
| #5 Hey, it's the old liberal mantra - as long as your lies advance The Cause, then it's OK to lie. After you're retired, then it all comes out, and we all have a big chuckle together about how we pulled one over on the rubes. "Accounts of the Soviet labor system should be suppressed even if true, since otherwise the French working class might become anti-Soviet." -- Jean-Paul Sartre, 1933 |
| Posted by: gromky 2007-04-10 08:22 |
| #4 About eight or ten years ago some letters of Sinclair were found in a relative of Sinclair's attic or some such basically indicating that much of what was presented as "fact" in "The Jungle" was pure fabrication in the vein of Bellisles or Dan Rather. Not to say there weren't problems in the meat packing industry during that era, but once you give up the moral high ground by lying, nothing you say after is credible. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2007-04-10 06:01 |
| #3 It could just as easily be open containers of chemicals stored on the same shelf as the cooking ingredients. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-04-10 04:50 |
| #2 Anybody out there know what sort of psychology leads the folks in China to keep doing this? Is it some sort of disgruntled worker thing? |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-04-10 02:41 |
| #1 It's Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" all over again. It baffles me how people can coldly substitute industrial chemicals for food ingredients, knowing that they will be found out and knowing that hundreds will be taken ill or die. And the cost savings? A few bucks. |
| Posted by: gromky 2007-04-10 02:23 |