perfidy

The FDA is enforcing a decades-old ban on the import of Chinese Peppercorns, causing the supply to dry up. A crucial ingredient in Sichuan cooking (yum!), the peppercorns come from a bush which belongs to a family of shrubbery who carry a disease that kill citrus plants (got that?).

Although the ban was put in place in 1968, the FDA did not start enforcing the ban until 2002, which is why the supply is drying up, and why there's now a fricking black market for fricking Sichuan pepper.

A note: nobody actually knows whether the peppercorns carry the citrus-killing disease, because nobody at the gubmint has bothered to test for it. As a fat, pampered decadent Western aesthete, I declare this an outrage!