I was a Fayetteville, NC, journalist in 1984, when Velma Barfield was executed.

Her serial betrayal of love relationships did not rattled my lifelong opposition to the death penalty. Yet accounts of Ms. Barfield's mixture of arsenic with nursing care did leave me shuddering.

Those unwanted memories haunted my day again Monday as I read a New York Times story detailing for-profit substitution of anti-freeze for digestible syrups in medication for children.

Those of us who care about animals know what the sweet-tasting diethylene glycol in antifreeze will do to a dog or cat -- destroying the kidneys, making a pain-seared cacophony of the nervous system which once sang with life's joy, inducing coma and finally death.

China, whose additives recently brought death to so many pets in this country, is also the principal source of the toxic syrup which has brought and continues to bring death to children around the world.

Times reporters Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker wrote:

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades. Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.

The damage done those who survive diethylene glycol poisoning is probably best characterized as irreversible.

Our trade policies with China can be corrected, however, assuming we value the lives and health of either children or pets.

The same negligent Chinese regulatory environment has killed and is killing both, worldwide.

Our own domestic regulatory negligence walks hand-in-hand with the brutal Chinese policies. Only last week, at least a decade late, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned U.S. suppliers ?to be especially vigilant? in watching for diethylene glycol. Nothing was said about China, nor were other problem sources identified.

After the fashion of some of the early comment on the pet food contamination, there was also reassuring mumbling which suggested that the problem is either nonexistent (in this country) or limited in scope.

This came from an agency that Congress and the Bush administration have not equipped to do the job, as was explained by Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia:

The FDA does not have the resources or the up-to-date surveillance system that's needed. This is the Achilles' heel in our system.

With just 1.3% of imported food inspected, and imports from identified sources of abuse still not well-restrained, I am reduced to mere courtesy:

"Thanks for the tea, Velma. I feel so much better now."

Cough.

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