Corporations Don't Care About Your Safety

The chickens are beginning to come home to roost for American corporations. For years, they have been closing down their factories in the U.S. (where workers actually think they should get a livable wage), and moving their production to sweatshops in foreign countries like China. But as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

American companies are paying for shoddy merchandise, and that's what they are getting. Now we're beginning to see that the foreign merchandise they're selling us is not only shoddy, it's downright dangerous.

One of the prime countries that's willing to exploit its worker's to provide American corporations with cheap merchandise is China. It's become clear recently that China really doesn't care about the safety of Americans as long as they get their money.

It seems like we find about about more dangerous Chinese products each day. It was bad enough to learn they were selling us poisoned pet food, contaminated toothpaste and defective tires. Now we learn they are even sending us toys that could poison our children.

The Mattel Corporation has just issued a recall for hundreds of thousands of Chinese made toys. It seems that the toys (Big Bird, Dora the Explorer, Elmo, etc.) were painted with lead-based paint. Lead-based paint has not been allowed in the U.S. for years because of the danger it poses to children.

Of course, the children of the age to appreciate the above-named toys are the ones most likely to put those toys in their mouth. It is unbelievable that those toys were painted with a lead-based paint. How many more dangerous products are the Chinese going to send us before we understand that they really don't care about our safety.

But the American corporations must take their share of the blame. In their zeal to abuse foreign workers to enhance their profits, they have allowed this to happen. They have made windfall profits more important than consumer safety, and they should be ashamed.