The recent and ongoing outrage of Chinese rat poison turning up in Canada's Menu Foods pet products helps to make the case that so-called “free trade” agreements (NAFTA-style agreements are not “free” at all from a consumer standpoint) are a serious threat to our food supply-much more so, I believe, than bioterrorism. This threat was foretold by Ralph Nader and others in a 1993 compendium of writings published by Earth Island Press titled “The Case Against Free Trade.” Please obtain a used copy of this book online and you will agree with me that it is prophetic-everything predicted in that book is now materializing, in part because the mainstream media has been so successful in its hard-driving campaign to marginalize the popular anti-globalist movement.

Globalist corporations are now secretly outsourcing certain components of the foods we (and our pets) eat, to save a buck, without giving due attention to quality controls. Please explain to me how any company can agree to buy wheat gluten from China to put into their product line and never run regular tests on that component to check for impurities. Is it because no one in the corporate world cares about pets, or worse? I just heard on a farm report that food testing in the U.S. has been reduced by about a factor of one half. If government and/or corporations don't discover a problem because they don't test for it, do they really believe that they won't be held liable by the people when something goes horribly wrong?

I suggest we all get off our Democrat versus Republican bandwagons and focus, for a change, on what both of the mega-parties have been doing to us for years. A lot of our problems today can be traced back to an amoral New World Order based on cartel-manipulated (“free”) global trade. They know that if the general public begins to see that the “free trade” emperor has no clothes, the gig will be up.

Lisa M. Backus

Auburn