Food gets the spotlight, but shoddy steel can kill you too.  Steel holds you up when you drive across bridges, or stand on the top floors of tall buildings.  The rate of failure is astounding.

William Upton, president of Vulcan Threaded Products, based in Pelham, Alabama, said a company team visited China in November 2006 to investigate how Chinese companies could manufacture a competing steel rod product so cheaply.

After observing "serious (safety) problems with the Chinese production," Vulcan purchased samples of the steel rod to have it tested by a certified U.S. lab, Upton said.

The results showed "133 failures out of the 222 samples tested -- an astonishing 60 percent failure rate," Upton said. "These results are unbelievable because in normal applications for this product, only a zero percent rate is acceptable."

The Steel Caucus in Congress is pushing the issue:

"When sub-standard steel goes into our roads, bridges, and skyscrapers, it threatens our safety and unnecessarily risks American lives," Rep. Jim Visclosky, an Indiana Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus, said in a statement after a caucus hearing on steel imports from China.

Imagine if a U.S. company had a 60% failure rate.  They would be pariahs.  But with China, its just "free trade."