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China's Food Scandals
By Shannara Johnson
In our recent article "Honeybees and Food Supply," we mentioned that due to insufficient pollination of certain crops and vegetables, the U.S. might become more dependent on food imports from foreign countries, among them China.
According to the USDA Economic Research Service, exports from China to the United States already more than doubled from $1 billion in 2002 to almost $2.3 billion in 2006. Within the last decade, China has become the third-largest exporter of food--by value--to the U.S., shipping nearly five times as much as it did in 1996. The food categories showing the biggest growth are beverages, fish, nuts, fresh fruits and vegetables.
To us, that seems reason for concern, given the abysmal track record in food safety of the Chinese. Case in point: the latest scandal involving pet food containing tainted wheat gluten from China.
The culprit was melamine, a chemical made from coal, that reportedly led to severe illness in thousands of American pets. After the melamine incident spurred frantic investigations, the New York Times now claims that the contamination with that substance was actually no accident, but "business as usual" in China.
Two NYT journalists visiting the country found that "For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with [...] melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here."
In response to the pet food scare, the FDA banned imports of wheat gluten from China--but is that really enough?
"Evidence is mounting," says the New York Times article, "that Chinese protein exports have been tainted with melamine and that its use in agricultural regions like this one is widespread. But the government has issued no recall of any food or feed product here in China."
However, melamine is not the only substance we should be worried about. The Chinese seem to like cutting corners when it comes to food production... which makes us wonder if this practice may, at least partially, be responsible for China's "everyday low prices" no other country can compete with.
In 2004, for example, the country experienced a domestic food scandal over fake baby formula that had "little more nutritional value than water," as the UK Guardian stated. The "bogus products, which contained only 6% of the vitamins, minerals and protein needed for a growing infant" killed at least 50 Chinese babies and left hundreds severely malnourished.
"Up to 200 babies who were raised on the formula [...] developed ‘big-head disease'--a symptom of acute malnutrition describing the lack of flesh on the torso and limbs, which appear to shrink in comparison with the cranium."
Mistaking the chubby cheeks of their newborns for health, many Chinese parents didn't act until it was too late. The scandal involved at least 36 different brands of fake formula, manufactured throughout China.
In the same year, there was a public outcry in Japan when it turned out that part of the 653 tons of soy sauce imported from China in 2003 had been made not from soybeans, but from human hair.
"Human hair makes an alternative to soybeans because it contains the amino acids that give the sauce its flavor," stated the Japanese Mainichi Daily News matter-of-factly. "Chinese soy sauce manufacturers say they want to continue making human hair sauce because it's much cheaper than using soybeans. But outrage caused the Chinese government to ban the process, although many unscrupulous soy makers continue prowling barbershops for their economic alternative."
Would you like some blonde or brunette with your sushi today?
In 2005, the Shanghai Star reported that "a survey conducted in the Shanghai local food market [...] found that cuttlefish were soaked in Chinese calligraphy ink to improve coloring, eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim and big fish were stuffed with small dead fish to make them heavier and bigger."
Well, that was in China and Japan, you may say, how does that concern us? After all, the U.S. does have strict regulations for food imports, doesn't it?
While it is true that U.S. food regulations are in place, their reinforcement is another matter entirely. The FDA is woefully understaffed, with only about 1,750 food inspectors at ports and domestic food-production plants.
The International Herald Tribune recently reported that in 2006, "inspectors sampled just 20,662 shipments out of more than 8.9 million that arrived at American ports. China [...] sent 199,000 shipments, of which less than 2 percent were sampled."
"The public thinks the food supply is much more protected than it is," William Hubbard, a retired FDA associate commissioner, told the IHT. "If people really knew how weak the FDA program is, they would be shocked. [...] There are so few inspectors that most domestic plants get a visit from an FDA inspector only once every five to 10 years."
Which doesn't bode well for foreign imports--and the risk is only getting greater. For example, after reading the following, you might want to scrape chicken and shrimp off your menu.
Currently, the U.S. government is working on a new proposal that would allow chickens raised, slaughtered and cooked in China to be sold in the United States.
In China, livestock are often fed antibiotics banned by other countries to maximize output, states a May 9 article in the Boston Globe, and for economic reasons, many farmers raise both chicken and shrimp.
While U.S. poultry farms are mostly huge, standardized businesses, in China, "there are hundreds of thousands of these little farms," Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, told the Globe. "They have small ponds. And over the ponds [...] they'll have chicken cages. It might be like 20,000 chickens in cages. The chicken feces is what feeds the shrimp."
The result: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that up to 10 percent of shrimp imported from China contains salmonella [...]. Even more worrisome are shrimp imported from China that contain antibiotics that no amount of cooking can neutralize."
By the way, unlike seafood, under current U.S. regulations store labels are not required to indicate the country of origin for poultry--so we'll literally never know where our next meal comes from.
Our solution: close down the FDA and let the market compete for the best inspection standards, with the winners being those that are able to win the confidence of the public by delivering the highest-quality foods, at the best prices. Outrageous, you say? Well, per the above, it seems to us to be a better idea than the government-managed fiasco that most people now rely on to assure the safety of their food.
Enjoy your dinner!
