Do we really want to rely on China for our vegetables?

Via pixie at Green Mama's Mountain blog, this article about CCD and the importance of our bees:

The impact of the disorder spreads beyond beekeepers. There are 120 crops that depend on honeybee pollination to produce — from watermelon to squash to almonds.

The United States Department of Agriculture reports that about a third of our diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination.

Hayes said without access to pollination, growers will see a decrease in production.

“You wouldn’t have a crop without them,” he said.

He also said incomplete pollination produces crops that may be incomplete or deformed, making it lose market value.

“It makes a situation where we may have to depend on other countries for produce,” he said. “The USDA has reported that by 2015 40 percent of our vegetables will come from China. How much do we want to depend on someone else for our food?”

Update: Spocko at Spocko's Brain quotes from this article talking about a factory owner destroying evidence of use of melamine in China:

Los Angeles Times:

It wasn't authorities that finally acted: Mao himself razed the brick factory — days before the investigators from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration arrived in China on a mission to track down the source of the tainted pet food ingredients.

And then he notes the FDA's Mr. Batts trying to answer this question:

REPORTER: Well, sure. You said a couple times here that you're very happy with the cooperation in China, and I guess this is for Mr. Batts, and, but it sounded to me like what you're saying to us about what's happening in China is you're getting to a factory that's been dismantled and there's nothing to look at. You can't do any tests on anything. You can't talk to the people who have been detained. And you had trouble even getting visas into the country. So I'm just wondering, what is it that you're not telling us about how cooperative China is being?

The words China and cooperation do not belong in the same sentence.