Not Even Dog Food

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I remember a time not too long ago when the weekly Farm & Fleet sales booklet would have these nifty little “made in the U.S.A” symbols next to at least 50% of the goods. Over the years that percentage had been dwindling down to a point where about two years ago, the only thing remaining in the sales booklet that still had those USA symbols was for the most part – dog food. At that time, while blogging on a pro-union Webpage I used that observation in one of my “support America” rants by saying that “the only thing still made in America is dog food.”

Sometime last year I paged through the F & F sales flyer and for the very first time, I couldn’t find one of those USA symbols anywhere, not even on dog food. So when I first heard about the pet food contamination and its link to China, the coincidence was all too obvious to me. Now, I’m only using the F & F sales flyer as an everyday example most people in Wisconsin can relate to when seeking out American made goods. This is not a slap at Farm & Fleet, they like everybody else, have to compete in a twisted business environment and in my view at least have been one of the last big retailers to succumb to Walmartization.

“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”

Its amazing that places having the non-regulated labor and environmental conditions American capitalists crave, are also the same places with the most working poor and poisoned environments. This is what we have to look forward to with an idiot's definition of the “free markets” and we need to go back to school to compete with them.