SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Poisoned pet food. Seafood laced with potentially dangerous antibiotics. Toothpaste tainted with an ingredient in antifreeze. Tires missing a key safety component.
U.S. shoppers may be forgiven if they are becoming leery of Chinese-made goods and are trying to fill their shopping carts with products free of ingredients from that country.
The trouble is, that may be almost impossible.
Chinese exports have been in the spotlight since the deaths of dogs and cats in North America attributed to tainted Chinese wheat gluten, followed by this week’s recall of Chinese-made radial tires and an alert Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration warning about contaminated Chinese seafood.
My family hit some stores to see how hard it would it be for the average consumer to avoid the “Made in China” label – even for just a week.
My sons’ well-worn sneakers were starting to resemble sandals, so our family headed to the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls in search of a couple of cheap pairs to get the boys, ages 10 and 12, through the summer.
The quest began in the J.C. Penney shoe department. We soon found out this was going to be no easy task: Adidas, made in China; Sketchers, made in China; Reebok, made in China or Indonesia.
We finally found some New Balance shoes and I recalled reading that the company still makes some running shoes in the United States. The first few said “Made in China,” but we then spotted three adult styles marked “Made in the USA of imported materials.”
That sounded as close as we could get, so I asked my 12-year-old which of the three he liked.
“This one,” he said, pointing to the $75 shoe he’ll likely outgrow in months.
“Let’s keep looking,” I said.
We headed to a couple of other shoe stores – Famous Footwear and Payless – and found several other styles of sneakers mostly made in China and Indonesia.
Famous Footwear had one U.S.-made New Balance sneaker on sale for $40, but my oldest didn’t like the color combination, so we moved on. I guess those well-worn sneakers can last another week until this little experiment ends.
Avoiding Chinese goods at our local Hy-Vee grocery store seemed to be presenting few challenges, but it turned out to be more of a case of blissful ignorance than well-informed consumerism.
Products in nonfood aisles communicated their origins better than their edible counterparts. Labels of Suave shampoo, Dial hand soap, Kleenex tissues, Ziploc bags, Solo cups, Bounty napkins, Tide laundry detergent, SOS pads and Dawn dish detergent all read “Made in USA,” although none of the labels got specific about the ingredients.
Toothpaste was a bit more confusing – a concern considering some brands toothpaste made in China were recently found to contain a chemical called diethylene glycol, which is used to make antifreeze.
AquaFresh said “Made in USA” right on the box, but boxes of Crest and Colgate named only the companies that distributed the product, Procter &Gamble Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. respectively.
Procter and Gamble says on its Web site the Crest toothpaste found in stores is made in North America, not China. Colgate-Palmolive says on its site Colgate toothpaste is safe, regardless of where the company manufactures it.
The labels on most food products we looked at were of little help.
The 2002 Farm Bill passed by Congress mandated country-of-origin labeling for seafood, beef, lamb, pork, fish, fruits, vegetables and peanuts, but the Bush administration has delayed its implementation for everything except seafood until October 2008.
Some fruits and vegetables sported voluntary stickers, but shoppers always should consider the calendar when shopping for produce, as stores get a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from Central and South America during winter months.
None of the sweets in the candy aisle said “Made in China,” but most are likely made with at least one ingredient that originated there, said William Hubbard, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official.
Candy wrappers typically list just the U.S. distributor of the products, so label readers can’t determine the origin of the vanillin found in a Nestle Crunch bar, the carageenan in a Baby Ruth or the gum arabic in a pack of Mentos.
Those three ingredients, and numerous other flavoring and preservative additives, commonly come from Chinese companies, Hubbard said.
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