There have been some interesting things happening in China involving the food industry.And by interesting, I mean rather disturbing.
Specifically, two articles have recently caught my attention. The first, published Saturday last, involved the discovery of 5000 rare animals, packed in crates, on their way from their perilous habitats in "south-east Asia to the restaurant tables of southern China." Among the animals found were "31 pangolins, 44 leatherback turtles, 2,720 monitor lizards, 1,130 Brazilian turtles." Most, though severely dehydrated, were found alive. Unfortunately, a number of bears were not so lucky as 21 severed paws were also found aboard, wrapped in newspaper.
It's true that pangolins have anal scent glands that emit strong, foul smelling secretions and that monitor lizards can't even grow their own tails back. But the trend of extinguishing species, as useless as they may initially seem, for reasons like making it easier for mothers to breastfeed their babies, which is what the scales of a pangolin are used for, seems unfair.
To top things off, the former head of the Chinese Food and Drug Administration has been sentenced to death for accepting bribes during his tenure. He can appeal and potentially have his sentence lessened to life. We should be asking whether this is a punishment fitting the crime.
Zheng Xiaoyu has accepted nearly a million dollars over the years to approve substandard drugs and medicines that have caused the deaths of over twenty people. In 2005, thirteen babies that were fed a diet of powdered milk died because there was no nutritional value found in the supplement. There have also been deaths because people who thought they were taking effective antibiotics were taking chump-pills. China is now implementing a system to recall tainted food and drugs which will hopefully be able to warn people before it's too late.
China has some sway on this planet, with its population of 1.3 billion people.
We best be getting on the same page with things like conservation efforts and drug standards because the 'sleeping giant' has long been awake.
3 comments:
Just so that I understand what you are saying: You suggest that a crooked bureaucrat receive the death penalty twice for being bad at his job? It is unacceptable yes. It is unfortunate that his inept and unethical conduct had negative results. But should he really be killed twice for it? Once is too many. Should the half-wit from Walkerton be sent to the gallows because he was a piss poor public servant? He wasn’t corrupt like the head of the Chinese FDA, he was just incapable and irresponsible.
But questioning whether the death penalty is stiff enough a sentence for an accused corrupt politician is a little bit silly don’t you think? Obviously he needs to be held to account for the tragedies overseen and overlooked by his office, but in an affair like this there are several layers of corruption that go much deeper and much farther than the head of the organization. He must bear the brunt, but the corrupt manufactures who offered the bribes, his underlings who let it slide, and anyone else who might have had knowledge of any shady dealings that netted tragic results must also answer the bell. The aim in these instances should not be to punish the head with as much brunt force and repeated death penalties as possible. You cannot beat a dead horse to death.
What if they put the criminals in prison for a just period of time (even life is too long for 50th-hand manslaughter like this), and got to the bottom of where the system allowed such transgression and where it failed the Chinese people? Punishment focused justice focuses the justice on the criminal, not the victims. The victims remain silent and forgotten while the police flog the dead horse in the town square to vindicate the governments conscience.
This is the flawed logic of cowboys and despots. The flawed logic of Mr. Harper and Mr. Bush. The flawed logic that keeping criminals in worse prisons for longer periods (perhaps with a pinch of clandestine torture for good measure). The flawed logic of meeting murderers with murder. Eyes for eyes. Teeth for teeth. All this leaves the powerful with is more power. While the rest of us scrabble for dinner blind and toothless. Unjust things are unjust not because someone got away with, or tried to get away with, something that isn’t allowed, or that we didn’t. Unjust things are unjust because someone is victimized. Punishing the perpetrator is the least of all restorative measures. Mostly it is simply vengeance, which solves nothing, helps nothing, proves nothing. Other than who has more guns and better prisons or gallows.
Justice is a formative measure. If nothing is learned or improved by the application of justice then justice has not been served. Saddam is hanging and forgotten, yet blood still runs in the streets. Accused Islamic terrorists are on the water board as we speak, yet Jihad is still running in the veins of the children of extremists.
Cowboys, vigilantes, despots, terrorist, extremists, tyrants, none of these know justice from the end of their nose. Rash actions of brutal vengeance are better served in Tarantio films as plot points than they are in the real world as constructive attempts at justice which result in futile volleys of perpetual violence.
Perhaps they weren’t very sexy, and perhaps the outcome has not been as swift or assured as most would have liked. But the serious and measured response to the Sponsorship Scandal in Ottawa last year is exemplary. Not because it was focused on punishment or vindication (although the crooks and frauds did go to jail for a fair amount of time) but because it was focused on finding out the faults in the system, the individuals responsible and they ways in which the system can be fixed as to not have it happen again. It may not have been showy, but Stalin was the pro at showy and I don’t really think his style is what we’d want if given the choice.
A dead horse doesn’t need another flogging. It needs an autopsy.
Morgan, I appreciate your comment and would like to respond on a number of fronts. First, in no way at all was I saying that "a crooked bureaucrat receive the death penalty twice for being bad at his job."
I have no judgments of this man or his actions because, like you implied, there are many many layers to the story that we do not have access to. In fact, I got my facts from the BBC who, in turn, got them from the Chinese media. And if I'm not mistaken, the Chinese media are not the most open books these days.
So I do not condemn the man but was merely trying to bring to light, perhaps in too vague a way, the fact that a good many people died due to a system that has allowed this tragedy to happen.
I agree with you completely on the hijacked definition of justice that runs our punishment systems today. And it's a problem that evades many serious issues of our times. Euphemisms, rhetoric, and old fashioned bullshit are used to water down the intensity of problems and negate attention while a thousand more layers shift to cover up the latest cracks in the foundation.
Addressing the desperation and helplessness that often drives people to commit crimes in the first place would be the only place to start in creating effective change. Look at our own overcrowded jails and juvenile detention centres and see what colour of skin dominates. Is it coincidence that natives, our fastest growing population who has tended this land the longest, are also treated as third world citizens in one of the richest countries in the world?
Band-aid solutions like throwing money around or the death penalty do nothing to solve problems and they don't do anything to bring back a dying culture or 13 babies or countless others who should be able to rely on the system but can't.
And I'm not sure how I feel about the rest of Stalin's style, but that was one sexy mustache.
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