Taiwan Rejects Shipment of US Wheat

Carl

Wed Jul 18 03:27:01 -0700 2007

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Come on, and suddenly the few patriots we had here are silent? Blame China!

Taiwan Rejects Shipment of US Wheat

AB3A

Wed Jul 18 04:28:25 -0700 2007

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The Chinese are perfectly within their rights.  There is nothing wrong here.  The problem is that we have this silly notion in international commerce that there is such a thing as a commodity.  Farm grown fish, for example.  Clearly, there are practices that the Chinese feel are adequate, but we do not.  It comes as no surprise to me that the converse is also true. 

I don't see much of a story here. 

Taiwan Rejects Shipment of US Wheat

Richard.Neal

Wed Jul 18 04:30:51 -0700 2007

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The USA can only blame itself, if you set a standard for trade such as no carcinogens allowed in imported foods, then do a punch and judy show every time someone finds a pathetically low trace of a chemicals, don't be surprised when everyone starts doing the same with your exports. This is what happens when you stop doing basic diplomacy on the world stage and start screaming like a child when ever someone makes a mistake, piss enough countries of and you start getting the same crap back when you stuff up.

Taiwan Rejects Shipment of US Wheat

John W

Wed Jul 18 04:57:06 -0700 2007

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I agree with you that the US needs better diplomacy, but I don't think the situations are 100% the same here.  According to the article, Taiwan is in a flour shortage, yet rejected a huge shipment even though the levels were less than a tenth of the safe level (as declared by WHO).  The Thomas Tank Engine incident was high levels of lead in something very young kids were going to chew on, and the pet food contamination was only noticed when animals got seriously sick.  So yes, maybe the US shouldn't be surprised, but it strikes me as a more petty slip-up than the ones the Chinese companies made.

Taiwan Rejects Shipment of US Wheat

Thomas Lord

Wed Jul 18 13:47:52 -0700 2007

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Come on, and suddenly the few patriots we had here are silent? Blame China!

Dear troll,


Are you asking us to shoot someone?

Taiwan is to be appreciated for investing in the market for efficient testing and the domestic suppliers in question get what they deserve (hopefully short of being shot, in this case).

-t

Taiwan Rejects Shipment of US Wheat

pyro9

Thu Jul 19 06:40:58 -0700 2007

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The US suppliers who did not provide what the customer wanted lose a sale, Taiwan who wants a better product than the cheapest bidder will pay a bit more. That is all well and good.

We need to keep things in perspective. This incident involved a level of contamination generally considered harmless while a number of cases lately have been potentially fatal contaminations. nevertheless, Taiwan as a customer specified their requirements and a U.S. company misrepresented their product as meeting them.

That is something the U.S. needs to face up to, especially the FTC. We have an epidemic of producers misrepresenting their products (read lying like a stereotypical used car salesman) in the U.S. While the tech industry seems to be overrepresented in the liars club, there are plenty of others as well. We have laws against the dishonest practices but we rarely if ever enforce them.

Good

bill_mcgonigle

Wed Jul 18 09:47:50 -0700 2007

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So somebody tried to sneak in a banned chemical and got caught. All is well. I'm sure the shipment still has value where the risk of malathion is lower than the risk of starvation. Steam on.