Blogger At Forefront Of Food Adulteration Story Gets Banned In China

Prominent Seattle blogger David Goldstein of HorsesAss--better known to many as Goldy--has, from the early days of the food adulteration crisis, been an important voice and resource, reporting regularly on the melamine and cyanuric acid-adulterated grains from China that have sickened and killed thousands of animals here and made their way into the human food supply, too. Yesterday, Goldy discovered he'd been banned in that country, or rather, that access to his online writings had been blocked to any readers and interested parties residing in the People's Republic. Goldy observes:

Blogging can be a lonely, thankless avocation, but there are those little things that make it all worthwhile. An appreciative comment or email. The occasional donation. Getting banned by the Chinese government.

During the six weeks I’ve dogged the pet food recall story, I’ve often grown frustrated with my failure to raise a louder alarm that melamine-tainted Chinese imports may have widely contaminated the human food supply, but yesterday I learned that my hard work has not gone entirely unnoticed. Sometime late Tuesday or early Wednesday the Chinese government blocked Internet access to HorsesAss.org, apparently fearful of what its citizens might learn of their own unregulated food supply — like the fact that Chinese vegetable proteins and livestock feed are routinely adulterated with scrap melamine and scrap cyanuric acid, and that in addition to renal failure, chronic exposure may cause cancer and reproductive damage. You know, stuff like that.

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That Chinese authorities would bother blocking a Washington state political blog because I’ve covered their food safety scandal a little too closely, says something about the total disregard they have for the health and welfare of their own people. And perhaps it says something about their growing unease over the details of this scandal that have yet to come to light.

Either way, it reassures me that I’m on the right track.

Also at Shakesville.