Pictures below shows rivers polluted by chemical plants. Crops grow from water sucking water from these unhealthy rivers, and fishes are likely poisoned by it. Livestocks are likely chewing grass that sucked up water from these rivers.
Posted on 04/12/2007 7:13:01 PM PDT by don-o
SHANGHAI, China - The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella.
Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.
In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs in America have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.
"This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit.
Just as with manufactured goods, exports of meat, produce, and processed foods from China have soared in recent years, prompting outcries from foreign farm sectors that are feeling pinched by low Chinese prices.
Worried about losing access to foreign markets and stung by tainted food products scandals at home, China has in recent years tried to improve inspections, with limited success.
The problems the government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.
Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. In a case that galvanized the public's and government's attention, shoddy infant formula with little or no nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.
China's Health Ministry reported almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005, with spoiled food accounting for the largest number, followed by poisonous plants or animals and use of agricultural chemicals.
With China increasingly intertwined in global trade, Chinese exporters are paying a price for unsafe practices. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residues have caused bans in Europe and Japan on Chinese shrimp, honey and other products. Hong Kong blocked imports of turbot last year after inspectors found traces of malachite green, a possibly cancer-causing chemical used to treat fungal infections, in some fish.
One source of the problem is China's fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings which make regulation difficult, experts said.
Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 percent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while safer, better quality food officially stamped as "green" accounts for just 1 percent of the total, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
For foreign importers, the answer is to know your suppliers and test thoroughly, food industry experts said.
"You just have to hope that your system is strong enough and your producers are careful enough," said Todd Meyer, China director for the U.S. Grains Council.
Health Ministry officials acknowledge problems, but have described scandals such as the 2004 baby formula deaths as isolated incidents. Neither the ministry nor the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, responsible for overall food safety standards, responded to questions submitted to them in writing as requested.
Over the past 25 years, Chinese agricultural exports to the U.S. surged nearly 20-fold to $2.26 billion last year, led by poultry products, sausage casings, shellfish, spices and apple juice.
Inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are able to inspect only a tiny percentage of the millions of shipments that enter the U.S. each year.
Even so, shipments from China were rejected at the rate of about 200 per month this year, the largest from any country, compared to about 18 for Thailand, and 35 for Italy, also big exporters to the U.S., according to data posted on the FDA's Web site.
Chinese products are bounced for containing pesticides, antibiotics and other potentially harmful chemicals, and false or incomplete labeling that sometimes omits the producer's name.
To protect its foreign markets, China is trying to set up a dedicated export supply chain, sealed off from the domestic market, said Keyzer. Systems for tracking and tracing vegetables have been set up, although doing so for meat products is harder, he said.
Large producers targeting foreign markets have also moved to gain greater control over supplies by expanding their operations instead of buying from individual farmers.
The tainted pet food scandal is likely to increase this momentum. More than 100 brands of pet foods and treats have been recalled, one of the largest pet food recalls in history. Menu Foods was the first of at least six companies to recall pet food, beginning in mid-March, after reported cases of cats and dogs developing kidney failure after eating the affected products.
How the contaminated wheat gluten got into the product cycle is not yet known. The gluten was traced to a company outside Shanghai, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co.
The company and the government's inspection and quarantine administration are investigating. But a company sales manager, Geng Xiujuan, said Xuzhou Anying was only a middleman, buying the gluten, commonly used as a thickener in pet food, from companies in neighboring provinces and selling it to a separate trading company.
While no investigation results have been announced, industry experts said they suspect the gluten might have been contaminated by having been processed or stored in machines or containers also used for melamine. Such anomalies show just how difficult it is to ensure purity, they said.
"It's just really hard to test for everything," Meyer said.
Ugh - good thing we have all those dedicated Federal Employees protecting our food supply.
“Over the past 25 years, Chinese agricultural exports to the U.S. surged nearly 20-fold to $2.26 billion last year, led by poultry products, sausage casings, shellfish, spices and apple juice.”
Why the hell are we importing food from China?
Good article. I’d just add that it was a Chinese state-owned chemical company (Sinochem) that produced the tainted glycerin that eventually killed 86 Haitian children in the 1996 cough syrup poisonings there. Sinochem is also suspected to have been one of the largest culprits in Iraq’s Oil-for-Food scandal, doing nearly $5 billion worth of business in violation of the U.N. sanctions.
Just a bit more food for thought, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Because most people care only about paying the lowest possible price for everything they buy.
Won’t be long before someone shows up to tell us that life is full of risks and being poisoned by food is just one of the risks we take.
I wonder how many Iraqi kids died from tainted Chinese food.
And yes it was imported to the USA, mostly used by buffets and cafeterias (cause it was dirt cheap).
“Because most people care only about paying the lowest possible price for everything they buy.”
Yes, because they do not THINK in terms of consequences.
They pay the lowest price, NOW, but to pay ANY price they have to have a JOB.
There is NOTHING n-o-t-h-i-n-g than any American can do that a Chinese, Indian or Indonesian cannot do for one third of the price. Absolutely every job in America can be done cheaper abroad. Grow food? Cheaper in China. Program computers? Cheaper in India. Perform operations? Cheaper in China. Do legal work? Cheaper in India.
Whatever job you are in, no matter what you do, if you are an American, you are, economically, a grossly overpaid and completely replaceable slug.
So, let’s just keep driving for “the lowest price”. Eventually, there will be jobs in America again. Curiously, when unemployment becomes massive, you can start employing people...at Chinese wages.
So, for half-priced socks and cheap wheat gluten, we are going to reduce ourselves to a bunch of slaves.
We are idiots.
Why would the USA allow imported wheat products?
I thought the reason we taxpayers paid USA farmers tax subsidies was to compensate them for the onerous federal health regulations of the FDA that made certain their products were safer, but more expensive.
I can understand importing bananas, but wheat?
Wheat!!!!
You get what you paid for...
Makes you wonder who is getting paid off.
“You get what you paid for...”
People should not have the OPTION of paying for Chinese food.
We should not permit the import of Chinese food staples into the United States. Period. Certain specialty foods? Maybe. None come to mind. Chinese tea, perhaps? But basic foodstocks that compete with American crops. Zero. No trade allowed. We have no business importing contaminated food into America while putting the American farms out of business. Americans cannot compete with the Chinese in any facet of the economy on price. Therefore, we should use our sovereignty to erect laws that don’t LET the Chinese compete with Americans on the price of staples, and thereby import into the United States contaminated food AND unemployment.
“Free” trade with China will destroy the economy of the United States, over time. It’s an idiots game. Free people cannot compete economically with slaves. How many cotton farms in the South used free labor back in 1850? Not a damned one. Know why? Paid whites could not compete with black slaves. When labor is free, there is NO WAY TO COMPETE WITH IT.
American farmers cannot compete with people who can plant wheat in toxic waste dumps. The answer is to prohibit, completely, the latter from selling ANYTHING in the US market. No Chinese imports of food. NONE. We do not need Chinese food. We DO need a farm sector. And our pets. And our health. Ban imports of all agricultural products from China, NOW.
Importing wheat from China while paying subsidies not to plant it in the USA. The FRENCH are more intelligent than Americans are. They don’t let the damned Chinese (or American) wheat INTO THE COUNTRY. Result? Food is more expensive (somewhat), and the farm sector is robust and employs people. And nobody or his pet dies of food poisoning from toxic chemicals.
Why are we importing food from China?
Why?
No more Soy Sauce for me! Also, beware of imported Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng). They use human poop for fertilizer as well as many chemicals banned in the U.S.
American ginseng (Panax quinquefolium) is safe, if it is harvested from the wild. Beware of American cultivated ginseng, which is the 2nd most sprayed crop in the U.S. Wild is absolutely the best....and most expensive.
http://chemistry.about.com/b/a/127481.htm
Because it's a speedier demise then the Constitution as suicide pact, which always gets bogged down in the courts.
This way we just poison ourselves with Globalism(TM) from China or Mexico or some other backward, corrupt, primitive "country" and viola! We are back on track to the good old days of the feudal lords.
Oh sure, we be sick as dogs while we're dying but at a great value! Besides, our farmers are paid not to grow food. I don't grow food so I think I should be paid to but that's just how it goes I guess.
China’s woes? LOL its more like woe on us. Our traitor government sold us out to the WTO and the codex alimentarius. Woe on the U.S.
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