Personal Injury Law

Trader Joe's = Ethnocentric

By Bill Marler, Esq.

I was reading a story tonight about how a “US store chain cuts sales of food from China” and was a bit shocked that Trader Joe’s really intends to eliminate "all single ingredient food items (whatever that means) sourced from Mainland China are scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1.” Apparently, Trader Joe’s is basing this move on customer complaint stemming from “a series of consumer scares last year involving harmful products from major exporter China, including seafood, cat food, medicines and toys, led to mass product recalls and the tightening of US safety regulations (NO, it did not).”

Here is an interesting fact. In fifteen years of food litigation, guess how many cases of human food poisoning I have seen out of China – zero (OK, they have clearly killed some dogs and cats in the US, and recently sicked a bunch of people in Japan). Yes, Chinese products have been in the news as of late, but the reality it that US corporations do a great job of poisoning us without help from China or anywhere else for that matter.  Trader Joe’s, you should be ashamed for focusing on a problem from China that really does not exist. Joe, take a walk around your store and look at all of your products that you have sold that have caused illness over the last few years – how many have come from outside the US?

Full post as published by Marler Blog on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).