Well, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I need to stop buying Chinese goods. This is a tough one for me, mostly because so much of the cheap stuff that I love to buy comes from China, and as my readers know, I really like China and would like to see the country succeed.

However, one headline after another is screaming to me that I need to seriously consider the source of what I am buying before I buy it. At the very least, you too should consider keeping an eye out for the following:

Poison poissons? From BBC.

"The FDA is not allowing the import of these Chinese farmed seafood products until the importers can prove that the seafood is free from harmful contaminants," Dr. David Acheson, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's assistant commissioner for food protection, said during an afternoon teleconference.

He identified the banned fish as catfish, basa (similar to catfish), shrimp, dace (similar to carp) and eel, which he said may contain chemicals that are potentially carcinogenic.

Want shiny teeth? Try anti-freeze. From CBS.com.

The New York Times reported today that approximately 900,000 tubes of tainted Chinese toothpaste has shown up in prisons, juvenile detention centers and hospitals in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, including some serving the general population.

It's been going on for a lot longer than you think! From SF Gate.

"The U.S. imports a lot of Chinese glycerin, and it is used in ingested products such as toothpaste," Mary Pendergast, then deputy commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, wrote on Oct. 27, 1997. Learning how diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison used in some antifreeze, ended up in Haitian fever medicine might "prevent this tragedy from happening again," she wrote.

[emphasis mine]

China responds. From CNN.com via Itchmo.

Formaldehyde, illegal dyes, and industrial wax were found being used to make candy, pickles, crackers and seafood, it said, citing Han Yi, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which is responsible for food safety.

"These are not isolated cases," Han, director of the administration's quality control and inspection department, was quoted as saying.

Getting tired of all the bad news from China? Ha! From Newsinferno.

Defective tires have been added to an ever-growing list of dangerous Chinese imports. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ordered 450,000 tires recalled after Foreign Tire Sales, the New Jersey company that imported the tires, disclosed that they had been manufactured without a gum strip meant to keep the tread from separating. The tires, manufactured by Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, have been blamed for at least two accidents, one of which was fatal.

Poison toys. Good times. From ABC News.

China by far leads the list of countries making products that are recalled in the United States, accounting for 65 percent of all the recalled products in this country this year, according to CPSC. In 2006, China accounted for 233 product recalls -- nearly double the rate from the previous year, with lead a recurring cause among the recalls.

It's the attack of the killer tomato paste! In Italy! From WineNews.com.

And, Coldiretti emphasized, among the arrivals from the Asian giant it is significant that tomato concentrate, which represents almost one third of imports (31%), has registered a record import increase of 150%. This is a particularly worrisome situation for Italy because it was unable to obtain a norm for the mandatory printing of the origins of a product on labels, thus the risk that non Italian goods will be sold as Italian made.

Ok, well, that last one isn't so bad. Yet.