Importing Trouble

China has recently given the world melamine-laced pet food, cipro-laden fish, toothpaste tainted with antifreeze, so how can we trust it to give us certifiably organic food? That's the question John Gerstein asks in this article in the New York Sun. The answer would seem to be: We can't. And the problem isn't just limited to China. According to this excellent piece in The Why Files, U.S. imports of agricultural products have roughly doubled in the last ten years to around $70 billion. And yet, only a tiny franction -- about 1.3 percent -- of those imports are inspected by the FDA.