Today China executed the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, for corruption (ht to Say Uncle). His secretary, Cao Wenzhuang, was recently sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.

Zheng was sentenced to death in May for taking bribes to approve an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths and other substandard medicines. Cao was given a death sentence last month with a two-year reprieve for accepting bribes and dereliction of duty.

Such suspended death sentences usually are commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have reformed.

Zheng’s death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and likely indicates the leadership’s determination to confront the country’s dire product safety record.

I am pleased to hear that China is taking extreme measures to improve their product quality. Even though I try to avoid buying products made in China, sometimes I can’t avoid it; more often, I just don’t know.

Some would say that execution is a too-harsh sentence for merely turning out substandard products. Some would say not. I am among the latter.

Remember the poisoned pet food? The poisonous toothpaste? How about poison hog feed? Salmonella laden food seasoning? Lead paint on Thomas the Tank Engine? The flashing eyeballs filled with kerosene? The more than two dozen made in China toys recalled so far this year?

The FDA inspects less than 2% of the $5 billion a year agricultural imports, with consequences like these:

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

And we are about to make matters worse by allowing the importation of chickens from China. Worse still, you won’t even know which chickens are imported because the law doesn’t require that particular piece of information be communicated to you. If it were up to me, everything imported that you purchase would have a warning label right there on the package, printed in big bold letters just like the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cancer sticks.

Our children play with toys made in China. We are eating and drinking ingredients from China every day. We are putting our families in cars that travel at high speed, riding on tires made in China.

Here’s what happened to my tire last Sunday, as I was driving my son, daughter-in-law and two small grandchildren to the airport in Little Rock:

This was a catastrophic failure that happened at 70 MPH on a crowded interstate with cars, trucks and semis all around us. I began braking and moving onto the shoulder as soon as the failure happened, but the outside of the tire rolled past us before I was even stopped. Was this particular Bridgestone tire made in China? Actually, I don’t think so. At least I can’t determine the origin through web research. [And I had to include the pic as it was the original inspiration for the post.]

But 450,000 tires recently sold by a New Jersey company that were manufactured in China are missing the gum strip that keeps the steel belts from separating from the rubber tire. When such separation occurs a catastrophic failure just like the one pictured above takes place.

The mandatory recall will bankrupt the company, which estimates that it only has enough funds to replace about ten percent of the tires that it sold. The manufacturer in China will not contribute to funding the recall, so the American consumer is left holding the bag rotten tire. How many drivers will voluntarily throw away a new set of tires? I’m guessing very few, leaving over 100,000 unsafe cars on our highways.

Poisonous foodstuffs. Unsafe products. When will it stop?

Epilogue: One final personal note before I go. Can you identify this tire-related tool?

It is the hook that goes onto a scissor jack used to change a tire. It came with my American Dodge Durango. The hook that you are look at twisted off like cheap pot metal. I can’t prove it, but I’m betting that particular piece of crap was manufactured in China.