Pet food as biosecurity early warning for China

A recent tainted pet food recall has pinned aminopterin as the contaminant.

Aminopterin is used as a rat poison in some countries, but is not registered for that purpose in Canada or the U.S...
The company and investigators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had been focusing on wheat gluten, a source of protein in the pet food...
ABC News reported the chemical was on wheat imported from China. Menu Foods has neither confirmed nor denied it uses wheat from China.

Aminopterin prevents the body from using folic acid. Deficiencies in folic acid can lead to neural-tube defects (NTDs) in children. Is China unintentionally poisoning its own? The NTD rate in Northern China is troubling.

Rates of anencephaly in Asia have been reported to be comparable to those of other regions outside the British Isles, while spina bifida prevalence was lower in Asia than elsewhere (Little and Elwood, 1991). However, NTD prevalence in northern China has been reported to be among the highest in the world (Moore et al., 1997).

That's geographically coincident with the major wheat production region in China.

Most of China’s wheat production is in the North China Plain in the central and eastern part of the nation, where three provinces — Henan, Shandong and Hebei — produce more than 50 percent of the national crop.

Sustaining surges

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post reported on recently approved troop increases.

The president agreed to send 4,700 troops to Iraq in addition to the 21,500 he ordered to go in January, mainly to provide support for those combat forces and to handle more anticipated Iraqi prisoners. He also decided to send a 3,500-member brigade to Afghanistan to accelerate training of local forces, doubling his previous troop increase to fight a resurgent Taliban.
... the latest troop increase in Afghanistan had not been known and will bring U.S. forces there to an all-time high.

A recent article in Wired parenthetically mentioned intended long-term troop increases.

The Bush administration wants to increase the overall size of combat forces by 92,000 people over the next five years.

Given that the projected increase (92,000) is significantly larger than the combined surges (26,200 net for Iraq; 7,000 net for Afghanistan), the intent is apparently to be able to better sustain counterinsurgency operations on a scale comparable to what is going on currently, since it will better enable timely rotation of troops.

Will we see a petrodinar?

A recent Credit Suisse piece discusses the prospects of the planned Gulf currency.

... the GCC (union of the countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates) is also planning to implement monetary union. It is hoped to launch the "Gulf currency", which will be linked to the US dollar, by January 2010.
... A study by the Gulf Research Center in Dubai concludes that the Gulf currency could play a very prominent role and therefore raises the question of a possible dependency. According to this study, the Gulf currency could replace the US dollar as the invoicing currency for oil products, serve as an Islamic currency, and even mature into a reserve currency. However, Credit Suisse views this assessment critically and considers it unlikely...

There are plans afoot in Dubai. The ambition is clear: to enable a break from the system of the petrodollar while avoiding mere replacement by a petroeuro. Whether they will eventually achieve a viable petrodinar is an open question.