Chinese gymnasts

If the Chinese team in the 2008 Olympics works half as hard as its government to perform spectacular and intuition-defying acrobatics, it should have the gold Medal sewed up. Consider the latest in the "China is taking food safety very, very seriously but it's no big deal" event. China has announced it is banning 18 food products, including preserved fruits, candied garlic, grilled crab, peanuts and a fruit drink.

"After many years of joint efforts, China has enhanced its food safety levels by a large margin. Food safety qualification rates are continuously increasing," said China's health ministry spokesman, Mao Qun'an."But there is still a big gap between the current food safety situation and the requirements of consumers."

He cited "severe challenges" to food safety, including contamination from sources such as bacteria and concerns arising from new ingredients, fake food products and illegal ingredients that can cause harm.

Mao said the ministry has established a daily supervision and examination system targeting small food producers and is monitoring 61 chemical contaminants in 54 types of food, including Sudan red dye and formaldehyde, a preservative and an embalming fluid that has been linked to cancer in humans.

The health ministry dealt with 111,226 cases of illegal food production in 2006 while inspecting products, he said. During that period, 29,571 businesses were shut down and 1,700 tons of goods were destroyed. (Canadian Broadcasting)

That's a lot of identified cases of illegal food production. And nobody can deny that recent examples of antifreeze in Chinese counterfeit toothpaste, lead paint on children's toys, melamine spiked petfood, etc., etc., look pretty bad. But really, it's no big deal. In fact, it's a foreign plot to harm China:

Also on Friday, Mao lashed out at foreign media, accusing them of exaggerating the country's recent health and safety problems.

"The question of food safety is a problem the whole world faces," Mao said. "Foreign media are using irrelevant cases or just a few cases to make the safety issue much bigger than it is and have linked this to the success of hosting the Olympics" next summer in Beijing.

Wow. A double back flip with a reverse spin, finished off with a foreign media twist.