China, Pet Food, Toys And My Coma

The pageant used music, dance and pantomime to convey, poetically, how something had gone mysteriously wrong with a time-honored and health-promoting process by which a chemical called melamine is extracted from coal and then turned into plastics and fertilizer.

We saw how a visionary Chinese scientist had found a way to turn that coal-based chemical into something that looks like protein but has no measurable nutritional benefit. That much-venerated chemical was then placed in animal feed to make it seem more valuable. This might seem like cheating, but in China, where soy sauce is sometimes made out of human hair and eels are fed contraceptive pills to make them long and slim and more desirable for human consumption, it is not such a big deal.
Still, it made me wonder whether any of my other toys might be dangerous, and right away my eye fell on my “I Eat What Doggie Eats” play set. (Made by Sassy Cow Pet Collective of Zhuhai.) Based on a popular (but, I admit, problematic) series of books and video about Eddie, a little boy who stays home alone all day making casseroles and salads out of Science Diet products for himself and a dull-witted American bull terrier named Brip, these little toy kitchens and recipe books help you recreate some of that literary excitement with your own dog food.

Right away, I started thinking: What was I thinking? I was thinking about something that had to do with this toy. Whatever. I wound up making a delicious Savory Chicken Rice Bake for Adult Dogs (1-6 years) which had a pronounced coal aftertaste. Coal is a great source of energy, isn’t it?

But then the coal aftertaste started to bother me so I brushed my teeth with Suzhou City Jinmao Daily Chemicals Company Sure Brite Plaque Fighting Toothpaste, which contains diethylene glycol, a sweet, syrupy poison also found in antifreeze, which is helpful to me because my teeth are sensitive to cold – one of the side effects left over from a Panamanian cough syrup I used once which turned out to contain a highly toxic industrial-grade fake glycerin made in China by a chemical company started by a tailor with a ninth-grade education. Boy, I stopped coughing fast. When you lie in a coma for 19 days, suddenly coughing doesn’t seem so important anymore.

China is the new land of opportunity. You don’t have to know anything to make toothpaste or pharmaceuticals or dog food or toys. And everything is so much less expensive.

You probably won’t be able to find my particular favorite brand of toothpaste in regular retail outlets, but remember this: Just because a toxin-laced product has attracted international condemnation for the incredible hazard it poses to life and limb, that’s no reason you can’t find it for sale at your local dollar store.

Courant