Pet food scandal leads to broader food supply concerns ('it's simply impossible' to not buy fromChin

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chinafood18may18,0,2166175.story?coll=la-home-center

China exported $2.5 billion of food ingredients to the United States and the rest of the world in 2006, an increase of 150 percent from just two years earlier, according to Chinese industry estimates. It is now the predominant maker of vanilla flavoring, citric acid and varieties of Vitamin B such as thiamine, riboflavin and folic acid -- nutrients commonly added to processed flour goods such as Mission tortillas and Tyson breaded chicken.

snip

China's overall food safety record is poor. Use of chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides is heavy. Fraud and corruption often thwart what lax controls exist. In recent years, U.S. officials have issued alerts about Chinese honey tainted with a harmful antibiotic; Chinese candy containing sulfites that can cause fatal allergic reactions; and infant formula missing vital nutrients, which in China left a dozen babies dead in 2004.

snip

In the U.S., major food manufacturers often don't know where all their ingredients originate. Mission, a Texas-based unit of Mexican food giant Gruma, would not comment about that or its directive, but said it was working with its suppliers to ensure the products were safe. Arkansas-based Tyson, one of the nation's largest providers of beef and chicken, did not respond to interview requests.

Many packaged foods contain dozens of items from around the world, acquired through complex networks of traders and brokers, before reaching manufacturing plants where companies have more direct oversight.

One food safety expert thinks poisoned human food is 'relatively low risk' because of 'tiny amounts' use. Yet if you look at what most people eat we are getting 'tiny amounts' of the same things in just about everything we eat. And don't forget the FDA/EPA/etc's 'safe levels' of the thousands of pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, etc in our food. those tiny amounts of safe levels add up to not so safe levels. People may not be dropping dead of this yet our health is still impacted. It just takes longer than with pets who ate food that is 20% melamine.

[Redstone]

1. Lesson: Don't buy anything made by a "major food manufacturer." It's not very hard to do,

if you pay a bit of attention and are willing to spend a bit more money.

Redstone

[pnwmom]

2. This is so revolting. But thank you! n/t

[Eurobabe]

3. Hmm, wonder why food allergies have exploded?

This shit makes MY head implode. Fuck free trade with China.

[aquart]

4. But Tyson did respond to a letter from my mother.

They said their feed didn't come from China. I guess it didn't. Just the ingredients did.

[kurth]

5. You eat a "tiny amount" of "low risk" over an extended period of time, and guess what

Yep. Not Good.

Think about your kids, and grandkids - who are gonna be eating the Chinese crap longer than you.

[Hekate]

6. Why is this not on page A-1 or the Food section?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad the LATimes is printing this information, but for the second day in a row it's in the Business section (the previous article was about honey contaminated with antibiotics) -- as though this is only about money.

Oh gods.

Hekate

[RC]

8. How can honey be contaminated with antibiotics?

The finished product is basically the same as it comes from the hive.

Someone injecting the little bees to keep them healthy?

[Shallah Kali]

9. They put it in the bees drinking water to perk them up often using illegal antibiotics

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chinahoney3may03,0,1358132,full.story

In 2002, Chinese honey was blocked first by the European Union and then the United States after shipments tested positive for chloramphenicol, an antibiotic banned in foods by many countries because it has been shown to cause a potentially fatal blood condition.

Later that year, China's Ministry of Agriculture outlawed the use of chloramphenicol in food production, and last year the Agricultural Science Assn. of China added it and nine other medicines, including penicillin, to its list of drugs prohibited from use in food.

snip

Earlier this year, Wang says, he averted a near-disaster when his bees suddenly became lethargic and their numbers appeared to decline. The second-generation beekeeper thinks they got sick after drinking water polluted by runoff from a chemical plant.

Wang went to a local drugstore and bought 10 pinkie-size tubes of penicillin for about $1. He says he mixed the medicine with sugar water and fed it to his bees. It didn't take long before they became active and produced honey.

snip

Li thinks 30% of Chinese honey comes from bees treated with antibiotics, but Sun Baoli believes the figure is as high as 70%.

[Hekate]

12. I take it back. It IS on page A-1 above the fold in my at-home paper.

Good for them.

Hekate

[Shallah Kali]

7. Please support Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling - link

please click here:

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/fwwatch/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6119

Your food's origin shouldn't be a mystery
Consumer groups and family farmers have been fighting for years to require mandatory country-of-origin-labeling (COOL) on meat, fruits, and vegetables in the United States. Many other countries have these labeling rules, and the U.S. already requires seafood to be labeled. Mandatory COOL enables consumers to make informed decisions about the food they eat, and allows domestic farmers and ranchers to differentiate their product from imports. However, the meat, grocery, and food processing industries want to keep consumers in the dark, and have spent millions trying to delay this program or kill it outright.

Tell Congress that consumers deserve to know what they are eating and to require mandatory country of origin lableing now.


Please also consider writing your state officials encouraging them to create or expand State of Origin labeling program to promote local food. Buying as local as possible is not only kinder to the environment, and by extension the entire human race, it supports your local economy instead of some other nation's economy. Insource instead of outsource!

Write you local officials here:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/?lvl=L

One more suggestion - encourage grocery stores to promote local food as well if they don't already. & if you are looking for CSAs and farmer's markets in your area go to http://www.LocalHarvest.org & http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml & http://www.wilson.edu/wilson/asp/content.asp?id=804

[WinkyDink]

10. But even so, what about the actual CHEMICALS used?

[Shallah Kali]

11. Which ones? Pesticides and such? Preservatives? Synthetic Vitamins?

Do you want each food labled with the pesticides used? or do you mean each ingredient such as chemical preservitives like BHT to say "BHT (China), Vitamin C (China))" ? sorry if I am being dense but I can't figure out specifically what you wish to know.

[Hekate]

13. Done. Here's my letter

I have been following this issue since it first broke into the news.

Until the pets started dying like flies I had no idea of the polluted Chinese input into so much of our food. Unlike a lot of folks, as soon as I read gluten was the contaminated ingredient I knew for certain that the human food supply was also contaminated, because when my son was an infant he had celiac disease and I had to read EVERY label.

That was over 25 years ago -- now, I have no confidence at all that the labels will actually tell me what I need to know to keep my family -- including now a grandchild -- safe and healthy. I no longer purchase or eat beef because my government will not even allow growers who want to test their own animals for mad cow disease to do so.

Based on the articles in the Los Angeles Times today and yesterday, NOW what am I supposed to do?

From Reagan to Bush2, food safety and wholesomeness standards in this country have been set back at least a century. Upton Sinclair would find himself on familiar ground, would he not?

Now the CDC -- no doubt packed with "loyal Bushies" -- tells us publicly that we are in no danger whatsoever, while quietly directing its employees to start tracking human cases of kidney failure. It tells we we are quite safe, but tells its women researchers not to handle melamine if they are pregnant.

Please urge your colleagues to take immediate action.

Sincerely,
myself