Don’t bother looking at labels, no food products have to list where it comes from. The FDA web site will tell you just how many products from China are rejected each month, routinely more than any other country. While most countries have only a handful of rejected shipments per month. China rejections often run in the triple digits. Last month, 215 Chinese products were rejected.
REP. JOHN DUNCAN, (R) TENNESSEE: The Chinese are really ripping us off, adding all of these adulterated products and dangerous items and products and chemicals so they can make more money.
PILGRIM: Some small food producers in China have gone after easy profits by adding cheaper ingredients to undercut their competitors. The FDA web site often reads such reasons as unsafe additives for reason of rejecting a shipment.
REP. TOM DAVIS, (R) VIRGINIA: Even when you write rules, whether its over intellectual property or whether food safety provisions or whatever, you have to watch these people very, very carefully. They tend to circumvent and will do anything they can get away with.
PILGRIM: In 2000, Chinese producers were cheating on trade laws, shipping their honey through Thailand to avoid anti-dumping penalties. U.S. authorities testing honey for anti-dumping enforcement, found Chinese honey had the antibiotic Clorophenical (ph), which can cause cancer. That mirrors the recent case of melamine.
WILLIAM HUBBARD, FMR. FDA OFFICIAL: I would hope this time this is a wakeup call. This could have been human food. And people could have died from this.
PILGRIM (on camera): Just a glance of the FDA web site shows, of the small percentage of products that were tested, China had a startling high rejection rate. That begs the question, when faced with such high food and safety rejection rates from China, didn’t officials see the warning signs well before the melamine contamination,
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/03/ldt.01.html
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MICHAEL GREEN, CTR. FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH: There is no federal lead standard for children’s products. There is a federal lead standard for paint but not for children’s products. We think that needs to change.
I’m embarrassed for our government that they don’t have strong testing procedures in place.
Consumer experts from all around the world, including the commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, well, they are going to get together at an international product safety conference later this month. They are meeting to find ways to ensure products reaching the public are made safer. That conference is being held in Beijing.....
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/04/ldt.01.html
As a side note I wonder how many folks out there, especially those who’s insurance has you using a mail service for your prescriptions realize their meds are made in India.
I was recently shocked to look up the name of the drug company supplying my husbands cholesterol medicine, India.
Yet we have our government warning us not to buy drugs from Canada or online. What makes the difference if we are going to allow third world countries to produce our generic drugs?
As for China messing with our food and drug supplies I find it very frightening.
