Many mandarin orange trees, called "JInyumantang" in Chinese or "Gold and Jade filling the Hall" in English, have had their year's fruition destroyed. (Photo: AP)
Posted on 11/01/2008 7:19:58 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
The Chinese authorities, already battling a food safety scandal over melamine contamination of milk and eggs, have been accused of covering up an outbreak of maggots in oranges.
Tens of thousands of tons of mandarin oranges have had to be destroyed in recent weeks, state media have revealed in the past few days.
Yet persistent rumours of an infestation of fruit fly maggots, spread by text message, were denied or played down before the extent of the problem was confirmed.
.....According to state media, a farm in Sichuan, in the south-west of the country, first reported its crop of mandarin oranges had failed on September 21, and fruit fly was diagnosed.
But though surveys found orchards across major mandarin-producing counties of Sichuan had been affected, the provincial authorities did not publicly confirm the outbreak until after a local newspaper had broken the story on October 4.
Even since then, the authorities had tried to insist that the contamination was local, even though by that time infected oranges were on sale across the country. The full extent of the problem, which has led to tens of thousands of oranges being destroyed, was only revealed at a press conference at the end of last week.
The government is still refusing to give full figures on losses, but one neighbouring province said it expected losses there alone to amount to 1.5 billion yuan (£135 million) from falling sales due to loss of confidence, even though it was not affected by the outbreak directly.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Many mandarin orange trees, called "JInyumantang" in Chinese or "Gold and Jade filling the Hall" in English, have had their year's fruition destroyed. (Photo: AP)
I’m shocked, shocked i tell ya.........
Maggots spread by text messages? What's next? Rodents by email?
Maggots in food is the least of my worries from China.
You beat me to it....LOL
Fruit fly maggots are spread by text message?????
With any kind of marketing spin from Obama, his subjects would consider maggot-infested oranges "nutritional."
I was thinking the same thing.
It isn’t so much bad publicity because the fruit is ruined and won’t go anywhere, it will rot on the vine. It isn’t as if we haven’t had fruit flies in the US before and they are devastating. One year there were white flies and they turned everything to stinking, slimy goo.
Euuwwwwwwwww!!!...;0)
Fruit flies will do anything for the attention.
"Out of the oranges, maggots!"
I don’t get this melamine deal.
It is OK to make plates, dishes, and cups out of it, from which you eat food?
However, somehow it is a poison if it gets into your food?
Do an online search for most any kind of chemical that you might want to buy in bulk, and you'll quickly find that most come from China. If you can find North American stuff, it is double the price (even though it didn't get shipped half way around the world).
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like bananas”
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