Reply #104: Poisoning a competitor is not uncommon in China

[NewJeffCT]

While it could be a conspiracy to poison Americans, I would suspect it is more likely a competitor of the above-mentioned company sent an agent into one of their plants to poison their food supply.

Since I have relatives in China, I tend to follow China stories a lot more closely than most here on DU and have seen quite a few stories over the past 5-6 years where one restauranteur tried to put a competitor out of business by poisoning their food. It's not a big leap to think it goes on in other industries as well.

Here is one I remember:
>>>
NANJING, China -- Rat poison is the suspected cause of an outbreak of food poisoning in China, in which dozens of people are believed to have died.

"Initial investigations indicate there was rat poison in the food that was served to the victims," the China Daily quoted Zhou Qiang, a publicity official with the Jiangsu provincial government, as saying.

He said the poison could have been deliberately put into the food by someone, but public security authorities were still looking into the case that left hundreds of patrons of a small Nanjing store ill.

All of those affected fell sick on or shortly after Saturday morning.
...

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/09/15/china.poisoning/index.html