First, vegetable proteins imported into the United States from China and used as ingredients in pet food sickened many animals and killed beloved cats and dogs. In addition, used in feed for farm animals, the contaminants have entered the US food supply.

Thomas The Tank Engine, made in China, was determined to be a choking hazard.

Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze found its way to Georgia.

Fisher-Price used to be a highly respected name in toy manufacture. These all-American toys were manufactured at a state-of-the-art facility in East Aurora, New York (just south of Buffalo) by properly compensated American workers. Then the company was absorbed by Mattel, and the production was outsourced to China. Recently we learned that many of the toys may contain hazardous levels of lead paint.

Now we discover that tires manufactured in China for sale in the US lack a safety feature that prevents tread separation. There is a federally mandated recall.

But the states were way ahead of the feds on this. Tweny-four state attorneys general had already issued recalls of these same tires.

The problem was discovered as the result of an accident in Philadelphia last year.

The defect came to light in Philadelphia last year when a rear tire on a cargo van blew apart and wrapped around the axle, flipping the van into a sideways slide. Two people were killed, and a third was injured.

Foreign Tire Sales blamed Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, China’s second-largest tire manufacturer. Foreign Tire said the Chinese company changed the design of the tire without the U.S. company’s knowledge. The companies are in a legal battle over the issue.

From CNN Money:

FTS contracted with Hangzhou Zhongce to make the tires beginning in 2000 or 2001. Initially, the tires included the 0.6 mm gum strip, as required by the tire’s design. According to documents filed with NHTSA,

FTS began to suspect problems with the tires as early as 2005 as warranty claims began to rise.

A 2006 ambulance crash prompted FTS to hire an outside lab to test several sample tires, according to documents. Those tests revealed that tires were being manufactured without the gum strip or with a gum strip that was too narrow.

Other tests, performed in March, 2007, showed that the tire treads began coming apart at about 25,000 miles, according to documents.

In August, 2006, two men riding in a Chevrolet van died when the van rolled over after the tire tread separated, according to an announcement released by an attorney representing the men’s families and Safety Research and Strategies, an auto safety research group. Another man in the van suffered permanent brain injury. The van was riding on a Compass Telluride tires made by Hangzhou Zhongce in 2004, according to the announcement.

So now, finally, the defective tires have been recalled. But that will not bring back the two men who died in the Pennsylvania car crash. They are just two more victims of our disasterous outsourcing policies.

This interesting report just broke in the Blogosphere today:

BREAKING… Home Depot dumps O’Reilly: “We will not… advertise on the Bill O’Reilly show”

Home Depot seems to have had a change of heart. They’re now unequivocally telling their customers that they will not advertise on Bill O’Reilly’s show….

Apparantly that’s because The O’Reilly Factor expresses basically conservative viewpoints. The report goes on to tout Home Depot’s concern for the environment:

The Home Depot has a strong passion for being environmentally responsible both in the Company’s operating principles and in responsible retailing through our industry-leading Eco Options initiative, a program that allows customers to easily identify products that have less of an impact on the environment and empowers them to help make a difference in their own homes. We have led many initiatives with interest groups to develop standards and set environmental goals for ourselves and suppliers.

Well, Home Depot has dumped O’Reilly, and I have dumped Home Depot. But not because of their advertising policy. No.

Recently I needed a birdbath for my garden, and I ordered one that looked very attractive from the Home Depot catalog. It had a built-in solar fountain, and was priced over $100 — comparable to many other models with similar features for sale by other vendors.

When the item was delivered to my home, it was not in a box, but wrapped in cardboard sheathing that had been fastened with a cheap greasy tape similar in appearance to duct tape. It was padded with a plastic foam that smelled like gasoline, which disintegrated into little white crumbles all over my floor as soon as I removed the outer wrapping. So much for the environment. I scrambled to clean up the mess before my dog and cats ingested or inhaled any of the noxious material.

Inside the packaging was a sickly gray birdbath made from some sort of molded material, probably worth less than two dollars worth of raw material, labeled MADE IN CHINA. It did have an insert that purported to be a solar fountain. So I assembled the thing, installed it in the garden and filled the bowl with water.

To my delight, the fountain began to send up a sparkling spray in the sunlight. “Well,” I said to myself, “it fills the need and from a distance you can’t tell how crummy the material is.” But after a few minutes the fountain stopped working, never to function again. Within an hour in the sunlight the “faux stone finish” began to peel off like a bad layer of paint. I went in the house to telephone customer support, and quickly discovered that the Home Depot catalog has staff to answer the sales lines only. In any event, returning the junque was not really an option, because the packaging had disintegrated.

I swallowed my loss of $104.95 and ordered a birdbath from Colonial Williamsburg, a reproduction made by an excellent foundry called Virginia Metalcrafters. It was the last one they had. It came, it is installed in my garden, it looks beautiful, and the quality bronze metal will last a lifetime. Unfortunately, the fine company that made it has gone out of business after over one hundred years, a victim (among other factors) of cheap Chinese imports.

I belong to the Peter Lynch school of investing. That is, if as a consumer I find a product that I value highly, I buy stock in the company that makes it. And if a company that I own stock in starts selling shoddy items, I sell the stock. So I called my broker and told him to dump all my Home Depot stock, which he did.

I used to purchase all of my house and garden items at Home Depot, a considerable outlay for the grounds at Ivy Hill. But I can never bring myself to shop there again. So O’Reilly has lost Home Depot. No big deal. In my book “Home Depot” is a synonym for “shoddy.”