Apart from food, what’s the one type of product you’d want to be completely safe before using?

Things that are life-and-death, right? Maybe you picked aeroplanes or cars or roller coasters and all those make sense. But imagine something a little closer to home. A little more… intimate.

Law enforcement in Changsha, Hunan province, central China, discovered 34 million illegally-produced condoms this month. Is that close enough to home?

Condom manufacture in China usually requires a special medical product licence, which the company producing them of course didn’t have. Maybe more disturbing was that some of the condoms discovered had been produced under different brands to ensure their saleability.

The company, it is reported, were using a sex toy business as a cover for the manufacture of the condoms. It seems the cops saw right through it.

Make no mistake, though: this is a life-or-death issue. Apart from the possibility of unwanted pregnancies, faulty condoms risk the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, naturally a big issue in a nation with an estimated 300 million migrant workers, 3-4 million sex workers and around 1 million cases of HIV/AIDS infection.

At least the perpetrators were caught, right? I hope the police are continuing their enquiries, possibly under cover.

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