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Will the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's lobbying efforts bring tainted baby milk to the United States?

By Steve Lombardi

• Tainted Chinese Baby Milk Makes 432 Babies Sick

Chinese milk now appears to have been tainted to increase the profits of the dealers. By adding a chemical that is regularly used in other manufacturing processes dealers were gaming the system by fooling the protein testers into believing it had not been watered down. Here is a quote from the Wall Street Journal's September 15, 2008 report, Tainted Milk Sickens 432 Chinese Babies.

"At a news conference a day earlier, Gao Qiang, head of China's Ministry of Health, said officials now suspect that melamine might have been added to milk by dealers before it reached Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co., whose milk powder the government has tied to the illnesses. Mr. Gao, who is the health ministry's Communist Party secretary, said dealers might have been diluting the milk with water to increase the volume, then adding melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical used to make plastics and fertilizers, to fool tests for protein, which measure nitrogen levels."

Does this matter to America? It should matter to every mother and father whose children will come into contact with a product of any kind manufactured in China.

We have to ask ourselves what differences there are between the Chinese and American cultures that allow dealers to believe any part of this was acceptable. This incident clearly demonstrates the ultimate decision that puts profits over people. As a trial lawyer we are constantly under attack by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So while the Chamber advances its agenda for tort reform they waste our time, energy and resources focusing, not on how to buy American but to insolate wrong-doers from victim lawsuits. Consider the larger picture. If this were happening in the United States the Chamber of Commerce agenda would be supporting and insolating those dealers adding melamine to enrich the milk with protein and themselves with more dollars to spend on lobbyists. The Chamber talks about the over-crimininalization of corporate conduct. How about if instead of talking in generalities, the Chamber identifies those cases where corporate executives were prosecuted unfairly?

"Preparations are well underway for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform Summit. This year's summit will cover a variety of timely topics, including:

§ Overcriminalization of corporate conduct;

§ The public's stake in preserving pre-dispute arbitration provisions in contracts;

§ Parameters of federal preemption;

§ The challenge of discovery abuse in federal and state court; and,

§ Emergence of alliances between U.S. plaintiff lawyers and foreign NGOs."

So while the civil trial lawyers are investing their resources towards making your babies milk safer and warning you when it isn't, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is investing its resources in handing corporate criminals a free pass from legal responsibility. They get the profits and your baby gets kidney failure. Why doesn't the Chamber have a white-paper and summit on which bankers and stock brokers should be in jail over the sub-prime mortgage crisis? With Lehman Brothers heading into Chapter 11 bankruptcy where is the Chamber on what laws were violated by all who were involved? How about just identifying who did what and how much they made in doing it? Or is that asking too much?

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks extended losses in early trade on Monday, with the Dow industrials and S&P both down nearly 3 percent as investors worried about the stability of the financial system after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy."

We can help solve the problem by buying American-made products and telling the Chamber of Commerce to forget tort reform and to focus on how to identify products made-in-America. Tell the Chamber to let the courts deal with the criminals and to concern itself with committing resources to making safer products. There is no free lunch in this area. Tort reform simply is taking away protections now in place. It's not for you. It won't bring jobs back to America and won't keep any manufacturing plant in America.

So tomorrow while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is busy trying to convince you of more tort deform so they can afford even more lobbyists I'll answer the question: What is melamine?

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).