Tainted Food

[forsyth]

So the FDA is testing all sorts of food we get from China to make sure it wasn't shipped over in bags that used to hold pesticides and that sort of thing now, after the pet food and reports from South Africa and so on.

The question is though, why are we importing so much food from China? Especially things like wheat, which grows perfectly fine in the US. I can see importing foods that grow better elsewhere, but why stuff like wheat and corn where we grow so much the government pays farmers to throw it out?

Comments

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

The grain that is dumped is actually stuff that 'fails inspection' if memory served and I know that much of the stuff that farmers export they get a higher price for them selling in the US.

I used to work for a Grain Company (can't ya tell) and I know that several large farming groups exported 70-80% of their yield overseas since they got a better price for it over there. Smaller farmers can't compete with the size of yield nor the overall quality of the larger groups so they end up having to trash most of their yield or selling it as animal feed for a lower price.