Posted on 07/14/2007 6:58:02 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
WUGONG LAKE, China -- ......Zhu's fish farm, in a village on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, sends 2.7 million catfish fillets each year to the United States through a Virginia importer. Despite his best efforts -- he has dozens of employees clearing trash from the water each day, and the fish are fed sacks of fish meal more expensive than rice -- Zhu's fish sometimes get sick. Then he brings out the drugs.
"It's standard practice," he said. "Everyone uses them to keep fish healthy."
Chinese exporters like him have seized much of the US market, accounting for 22 percent of all imports, because their fish are cheaper to raise.
The fish are being raised, however, in a country whose waterways are an ongoing problem, tainted by sewage, pesticides, heavy metals, and other pollutants. The situation is worse in the southern part of the country, where Zhu's farm is and where industrial runoff accumulates.......
......The competitors spike the water with banned substances to keep their farmed fish alive. Batches of seafood traded recently at the Shanghai fish market, for example, carried the tell-tale greenish tinge of malachite green, a disinfectant powder that has been banned in China because it is a suspected carcinogen but is still commonly used......
......Using illegal disinfectants and antibiotics "is a lazy way of raising fish," Zhu said. "But it is extremely effective."
Many of the "Southern-style" catfish fillets on US grocery shelves these days are indeed from the south -- of China.
The Chinese government's reports express alarm that many rivers in this region are so contaminated with heavy metals and pesticides, including DDT, that they are too dangerous to touch, much less raise fish in......
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Sometimes I can find it there--but sometimes I can't.
if you knew what went into your american-produced hamburger and milk,
you’d puke!
antibiotics are no stranger here.
I suppose since we are diverting so much of our own corn to produce ethanol, the next mass import will be cheap poisoned corn from China.
I am getting tired of my government worrying more about Algore's global warming than it does the Chinese flooding the US market with poison goods.
I believe that all imported items must state the country of origin. That might not be true of ingredients, but it is true of something like fish.
I recently bought frozen orange roughy fillets from Kroger because my wife and I like it better than just about any other fish. I thought it came from Australia or New Zealand. But clearly on the label it says “product of China”. This worries me, but in a way, when you eat seafood, you take some risk. My local lake officially lists that if you eat fish from the lake once a week, you will probably be OK. My intake of fish from China is probably once a month. Is it full of antibiotics, heavy metals and bacteria? Possibly. Will I check the label the next time I buy fish? Definitely. But still, you pays your money and you takes your chances. I’m going to live to be a problem for my children no matter what, unless I wreck my motorcycle.
Compliments of the American Catfish Farmers Association /s
Sounds to me like someone isn’t happy about Chinese catfish being sold in the U.S. I take these stories with a grain of salt.
If the catfish have been raised on a diet of raw sewage, like was found for Chinese shrimp, the salt won't be enough to kill the bugs you'll be ingesting. But be my guest! They are your intestines!
Does that mean I get more for my money? Meat and shrimp at the same time. Yummy.
I was really ticked off when I bought frozen “Alaskan Salmon” from Albertson’s only to find tiny lettering stating “product of China.”
I’ve just about given up on fish. Those from Asian fish farms — not just Chinese—are raised in dreadful overcrowded water opaque with fish feces and the poor creatures are sick with all kinds of diseases and exotic parasites. If they don’t get antibiotics they can make you really sick with diseases we’ve never had here. Atlantic Salmon are being raised in the Pacific off Chile, some species of fish grown off the west coast of Mexico are plagued with Chinese fish parasites and diseases because that’s where the breeding stock came from. And water carries all those diseases to wild fish who have no natural immunity to fish diseases brought from other oceans. It’s a bloody mess.
Food-Origin Label Law Won't Start Until October, 2008. See this link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1866110/posts
Lying POS.
Hmmm...sounds like it’s about time to start buying fresh...from local butchers.
From the article:
>>>Illegal substances such as malachite green keep showing up in Chinese seafood shipped to the United States, provoking a partial US ban on such shipments earlier this month. It was the latest development in an ongoing global awakening about the risks of Chinese-made products, from toys tainted with lead paint to pet-food ingredients containing a deadly industrial chemical.
Using illegal disinfectants and antibiotics “is a lazy way of raising fish,” Zhu said. “But it is extremely effective.”<<<<
This is flagged at Wiki requestion clean up. But still seems to be good info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachite_green
Malachite green, also called aniline green, basic green 4, diamond green B, or victoria green B, IUPAC name:4-[(4-dimethylaminophenyl)-phenyl-methyl]-N,N-dimethyl-aniline is a toxic chemical primarily used as a dye. When diluted, it can be used as a topical antiseptic or to treat parasites, fungal infections, and bacterial infections in fish and fish eggs. It is also used as a bacteriological stain.
(snip)
Malachite green and its major metabolite, leuco-malachite green has been reported to have mutagenic and carcinogenic effects. Culp SJ in her recent article published in Mutation Research mentions that rats fed malachite green experience “a dose-related increase in liver DNA adducts” along with lung adenomas. Leuco-malachite green causes an “increase in the number and severity of changes”. As leuco-malachite green is the primary metabolite of malachite green and is retained in fish muscle much longer, most intake of malachite green would be in the leuco form. During the experiment, rats were fed up to 543 ppm of leuco-malachite green, an extreme amount compared to the average 5 ppb discovered in fish. After a period of two years, an increase in lung adenomas in male rats was discovered but no incidences of liver tumors. This shows that although adducts are formed, they have “little mutagenic or carcinogenic consequence.” Therefore it could be concluded that malachite green caused carcinogenic symptoms but a direct link between malachite green and liver tumor could not be proved.
(snip)
bump
You still have local butchers?
I’ve not seen when in years.
:(
The quality of their meat is usually much higher than that of the big grocery stores but also their prices are much higher. I shop there "when it's important", such as when company is coming, or when I have a monetary windfall. And yes, you can still tell them to cut you some Angus ribeyes 2 inches thick or whatever you want, and they carefully wrap it all in freezer paper for you...not that you'd actually freeze it ;)
Wow, it does sound bad for the current fish market. On the one hand, doctors tell us to eat more fish for the healthy benefits, but on the other hand...
I miss having a local butcher. Yes, they were more expensive then a big grocery store; but the meat always tasted better.
Our old local butcher knew most of his customers. Definitely knew all his regular customers. And he learned their buying habits and would have items that were purchased routinely in stock.
It not poisoned, dead fish! It "pining for fjords!"...lookie, we give you big discount...
In one of Barry Sears' (The Zone Diet guy) books he says that doctors agree that we should be taking large amounts of fish oils for their Omega 3-6 benefits, but the docs don't ingest those oils because they're afraid of concentrated pollutants. Molecularly distilled fish oil from Arctic waters is your best bet, but it's horrendously expensive.
Right now, the only food that has to be labeled with country of origin is fish, but if it's processed in any way, (breaded, for instance), it doesn't have to be labeled.
Next year, the labeling should include perishable agricultural products (veggies and fruit), certain meats (not including poultry) and peanuts. If the meat, veggies or fruit are processed, or are included in a prepared food such as a frozen dinner, the COO doesn't have to be labeled.
The regs were passed as part of a farm bill in 2002, but the enforcement has been postponed twice by the current administration, and it could be postponed again by executive order.
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