If you don’t check where your garlic is coming from, according to a prominent senator, you could be in for a very nasty surprise.
In a letter to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott warned that garlic grown in China could be nourished on human waste and ought to be investigated.
Scott’s office said in a Dec. 6 news release that he was taking the action “following reports that the garlic is being grown in human sewage, then bleached and harvested in abhorrent conditions often with slave labor.”
In the letter, the senator said he had grave concerns about “imports from Communist China of all grades of garlic, whole or separated into constituent cloves, whether or not peeled, chilled, fresh, frozen, provisionally preserved or packed in water or other neutral substance, and the threat they pose to U.S. national security.”
“Food safety and security is an existential emergency that poses grave threats to our national security, public health, and economic prosperity,” Scott noted.
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As the BBC reported, the United States has long been concerned about garlic imports from China — but mostly from a trade perspective.
The communist nation is the world’s largest garlic exporter — yet, since the 1990s, the U.S. has placed tariffs on Chinese-grown garlic due to accusations of “dumping,” the trade practice of a company or a country flooding the market with a product at a low price to harm competitors.
Under former President Donald Trump, these tariffs were increased as part of Trump’s hard-line policies on trade with Beijing.
However, as Scott noted in his letter to Raimondo, “beyond these trade enforcement concerns, there is a severe public health concern over the quality and safety of garlic grown in foreign countries — most notably, garlic grown in Communist China.”
Would you buy garlic from China?
“Communist China’s growth practices are well-documented in the public domain, from cooking blogs and home magazines to YouTube videos and documentaries,” the senator wrote.
“These practices include such offenses as fertilizing garlic with human feces and forms of sewage, growing garlic in sewage, bleaching garlic to make it appear whiter and cleaner to the eye after its growth in unsanitary conditions, and stripping the root end from garlic before it enters U.S. markets as to make it appear more appealing and also to comply with U.S. laws regarding prevention of soil-borne diseases and contaminants,” he said.
Indeed, both individuals and journalistic outlets have documented the serious charges; here are two videos, one from food YouTuber Bobby Parrish about the unsanitary conditions the bulbs are grown in, and another from the Financial Times regarding the prison labor used to harvest and peel it:
“As garlic is a widely-used product for cooking and food preparation, the integrity and safety of this product are paramount to the entire population,” Scott said in his letter.
“To maintain a strong and stable economy, domestic tranquility, a productive society, public health and our national security, we must assure quality and confidence in our food supply to all Americans and their families,” he wrote.
“If our food is not safe to eat, we cannot expect our men and women in uniform to be equipped and able to do their jobs to defend our nation and her interests,” the senator said. “Doctors, police officers, nurses, teachers, firefighters, military service members, retirement communities, moms and dads, and every American expects our government can and does make sure our food is safe to eat.
“We must ensure that to be the case and actively protect our market from harmful products and bad actors.”
Scott demanded that the Department of Commerce launch an investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which authorizes the secretary of commerce “to determine the effects on [U.S.] national security” that imported goods have.
“According to the law, once a Section 232 investigation is requested in writing, Commerce must ‘immediately initiate an appropriate investigation to determine the effects on the national security’ of the subject imports,” he wrote.
“After consulting with the Secretary of Defense, other ‘appropriate officers of the United States,’ and the public, if appropriate, Commerce has 270 days from the initiation date to prepare a report advising the president whether the targeted product is being imported ‘in certain quantities or under such circumstances’ to impair U.S. national security and to provide recommendations for action or inaction based on the findings,” the senator said.
Of course, you don’t have to wait for any investigation to be conducted to stop buying Chinese garlic.
As Parrish noted in his videos, one of the key ways to spot Chinese garlic is that the final product will be bleached and have the roots cut off; American-grown garlic will have some of the root ends still attached and the occasional blemish because it isn’t bleached.
And, of course, if the garlic comes in packaging, sometimes they make it even simpler for you by noting that it’s a “product of China” on the labeling. Checking labels, therefore, is imperative to avoid eating what could be unhealthy and unethically harvested produce.
Naturally, Scott has gotten some blowback for the letter — particularly from the hacks at our favorite CCP-controlled media outlet, the self-parodying Global Times. Witness this editorial cartoon and post from Global Times “journalist” (there aren’t air-quotes emphatic enough) and former editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, who jokes (I think, anyhow) that Scott might be a vampire:
#GTCartoon: #US paranoia about Chinese garlic. @_ValiantPanda_ pic.twitter.com/rewWFn6loM
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) December 10, 2023
.@SenRickScott accuses Chinese garlic of threatening US national security. It’s said that vampires are afraid of garlic. Unlike those Americans who love garlic, Scott is afraid of Chinese garlic. Could it be that he is… pic.twitter.com/hFUx8N0Y5m
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) December 10, 2023
Sorry, but given that I don’t like eating garlic allegedly nurtured in human waste, bleached and then harvested by prison labor, I’m in Scott’s camp — and, as he pointed out in closing, it’s not like the Biden administration hasn’t taken an activist tack in investigating trade already.
“This Department of Commerce has conducted dozens of 232 investigations,” Scott wrote. “I believe food safety issues, especially on the matter of Communist Chinese garlic, grown and produced with sewage and other unsanitary practices, to be worthy of an investigation.”
So, indeed, should every American who is concerned about food safety and human rights.
