‘Communist Chinese garlic’ a threat to US national security?

It’s no joke that Rick Scott, a Republican senator from Florida, is serious about investigating and banning imports of the vegetable into America

Alex Lo

Published: 9:00pm, 13 Dec 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

First it was banning sales of advanced computer chips. Then, it was disrupting industrial supply chains such as those for the production of electric vehicles. Now, Washington has opened a new front against communist China: garlic.

It could be a major disrupter to the Chinese economy, if Republican politician Rick Scott has his way. The senator from Florida has drafted two pieces of legislation to impose high tariffs and ban imports: the Sewage Garlic Imports Act and the Sewage Garlic Imports Tariff Act.

Scott claims, in his press release, that Chinese “garlic is being grown in human sewage, then bleached and harvested in abhorrent conditions often with slave labour”.

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, he said “Communist Chinese garlic, grown and produced with sewage and other unsanitary practices, to be worthy of an investigation”, as pertaining to “the effects on [US] national security of imports …”

I swear on my late mother’s honour I am not making this up. I know I was once guilty of quoting from a dubious news source with a story claiming Republican Mike Gallagher – chairman of the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party – warned that spying devices had been found hidden in shrimps imported from China.

OK, that was, as former and perhaps future president Donald Trump likes to say, “fake news”. But I did make it very clear I was quoting from a made-up story from The Onion, America’s No 1 satirical news outlet. I guess some of you were too serious for a philistine like yours truly. This one about garlic, though, is no joke. Don’t believe me? Do check out the senator’s official website.

It will be fascinating to track how far both drafts manage to go in the legislative process. Is the US Congress full of vampires? We are about to find out, but that would explain a lot, and I mean a lot! To quote Chief Justice John Roberts of the US Supreme Court, welcome to the “greatest deliberative body in the world”.

Now, you may argue Scott couldn’t be a vampire as he was from Florida, “the Sunshine State”. But have you checked his hidden middle name? I bet you it’s Renfield.

In the letter, Scott said he gleaned his information from “cooking blogs and home magazines to YouTube videos and documentaries” about the alleged Chinese practice; reliable sources! Unfortunately, his claims are not substantiated by trade and scientific evidence.

“Is it true that garlic in China is grown in human faeces and watered with urine?” This exact question was posted by the Separating Sense from Nonsense website run by the Office for Science and Society of McGill University in Canada.

It said: “There is no evidence that garlic in China is fertilised in this fashion. In any case, there is no problem with this, human waste is as effective a fertiliser as is animal waste”

It is also more environmentally friendly than chemicals, according to experts.

Though only elected in 2018, Scott has worked up quite a resume as a formidable anti-China hawk. He once accused former Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor of being a “puppet” of Beijing. She should have been a puppet of Washington!

In 2020, he invited Hong Kong fugitive Nathan Law Kwun-chung to attend Trump’s State of the Union address.

Scott is currently reintroducing his No Taxpayer Dollars for Communist Chinese Covid Tests Act to force the administration of President Joe Biden to buy American. Why should the US government buy from Chinese communists and take jobs away from Americans when it can buy overpriced test kits from US companies, which probably ordered them from China anyway?

Even as a pro-communist-Chinese pundit, I can understand Scott’s “buy American, create American jobs” philosophy. But if Congress keeps going at this garlic thing, it will put the US sector of comedians and satirists out of business.

How can any story from The Onion beat Scott’s garlic legislation? They say reality is stranger than fiction. Scott shows reality is funnier than most American comedies.