Small food from China.

Small food. Small quality food. That is my beef.

Does everything have to come from China, a place where they had to shut down 30,000 factories so the air would be clear enough to host an Olympic event, a place where people were tasked with clearing the green slime from the waterways by hand, so the rowers could compete?

I do not want my food to come from China. 80% of store bought fish is processed in China. China is a place where fish farms can exist in a seemingly endless chain, where the excess feed, antibiotics, and poop from the fish farm upstream are injested, then expelled downstream to the next farm.

I buy things at the 'Dollar Store'. A place in which I know just about everything is made in China, and what isn't, is made in India.

Still, that doesn't mean I am without taste. I like Oysters, Mussels, Clams...lots of stuff from the sea. The stuff I am used to, produced in Canada or the US, tastes good and comes in whole morsels of seafood.

One day, I noticed the Dollar Store had some for sale. A can of mussels, a can of oysters....

The seafood was broken, miscellaneous pieces that could have been from any sea animal. A lot of it consisted of parts of the oyster some people leave out, like the intestines. They are small animals, so eating those parts by accident won't kill you, but they are not the tastiest or meatiest parts.

Several months ago I noticed the disappearance of Snow Peas from the grocery shelves. What took the place of one of my favourite raw foods was labelled Snap Peas. They look the same, but these ones, only from China, are smaller, a grey-green (think tired), and are bitter, even after cooking.

Wasn't China until the last few years a recipient of food aid? Someone could help me here. What are they doing exporting food to us? I thought we had an abundance of food to sell to others.

Look, I will buy a crappy ladle that will break after 100 uses, or a frying pan that will fry itself after 50 uses. I will buy the cheap batteries, the pack of pens that will each spontaneously explode or stop working after a week.

I will NOT buy my food from China, a polluted wasteland where expertise in government supersedes expertise in any form of engineering.

Is THIS the country we want free trade with?