Re: China report: Industrial chemicals being used in products from candy to seafood

On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 06:39:08 -0700, gjensen
<gjensen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The china safety situationis very worrisome, we have been tracking toy
recalls form China since Feb 2007, there have been 15 (http://
www.familiesonlinemagazine.com/todaysfamilyforum/viewforum.php?f=19).

Safety might be the "tipping point" to bring manufacturing back to the
US. One can only hope!



On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:42:32 -0400, "Chloe" <justsayno@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I was going to write a long rebuttal but from experience the effort
will be like talking to a brick wall. It will be a lot easier to
concede to your attitude that the Chinese are evil people only to
ready to poison the imperialist Americans and take over the world.
Buy American. In America even pets eat better than Chinese peasants.

Whatever. But I'm not sure from what I wrote how you reached the conclusion
I think the Chinese (or any other ethnic group for that matter) are evil. I
don't. I just think they have different attitudes about some things from
Americans. Domestic pets are a very clear-cut example of one of those
things.


There you go again. Non whites have different and of course superior
attitudes. Chinese treat people more cavalier(ly) than Americans
treat their pets. And it figures. We regularly come across court
cases where divorced couples fight more bitterly over the custody of
their pets than their multimillion dollar properties.



And I know for sure the Chinese have a bunch of different laws. There's
nothing wrong with my wanting product safety to be based solidly on American
laws instead of Chinese laws. I'm not Chinese, and I don't live in China.
Duh. I don't necessarily want to try to change China, I just don't want to
be exposed to Chinese products unless the U.S government starts to take a
serious look at their safety.

I have not in any of my posts say that bad products be excused. They
can kill and injure people and must be stopped wherever found. Its
like your new drugs. Their damaging side effects only surfaced after
general use and they have pulled from the market regardless of how
many billions and years were spent to bring them to market.

Yes. Each country's laws are different from others. Laws are not made
in imitation of other countries. Laws are made because there is a
need for them. Adding toxic industrial chemicals to food products is
something that surfaced only now because of the lucrative export
market. The people who do so do it out of ignorance and greed. Such
people exist everywhere. There were no laws governing food additives
before because in the past (in China) there were few if any national
food companies let alone transnational ones. Food adulterations were
localized and quickly isolated.

Now this problem of large factory sized food production methods has
come to the forefront and we have to thank
Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:05:07 -0700, sagawaeasdgsdaasfd@xxxxxxxxx
for this post

June 27, 2007
China shuts 180 food factories for using formaldehyde, illegal dyes
By AUDRA ANG
Associated Press

BEIJING - China has closed 180 food factories after inspectors found
industrial chemicals being used in products from candy to seafood,
state media said today.

The closures came amid a nationwide crackdown on shoddy and dangerous
products launched in December that also uncovered use of recycled or
expired food, the China Daily said.

Formaldehyde, illegal dyes, and industrial wax were found being used
to make candy, pickles, crackers and seafood, it said, citing Han Yi,
an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine, which is responsible for food safety.
(more)

and these details are revealing

Han said most of the offending manufacturers were small, unlicensed
food plants with fewer than 10 employees, and all had been shut down.
China Daily said 75 percent of China's estimated 1 million food
processing plants are small and privately owned.

According to Han, the ongoing inspections are focusing on commonly
consumed food such as meat, milk, beverages, soy sauce and cooking
oil. Rural areas and the suburbs - where standards are likely less
strict - are still considered key areas for inspectors, he said.

Meanwhile, another regulating agency, China's State Administration for
Industry and Commerce, said it closed 152,000 unlicensed food
manufacturers and retailers last year for making fake and low-quality
products.

It also banned 15,000 tons of "unqualified food" from entering the
market because it failed to meet national standards.

Its pretty obvious there is a widespread problem for which new laws
will have to be enacted and new procedures put in place to ensure food
safety and food quality. But there is no conspiracy from China or
Chinese to poison themselves or the rest of the world. Chinese will
be the first people to be poisoned by adulterated food and their
government will be the first to be blamed for not taking action to
protect the people.

The US Federal Food and Drug Act was passed on June 30, 1906 and
became effective on January 1, 1907. It was designed to prevent the
"manufacture, sale or transportation of aldulterated, misbranded or
poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines and liquors." "Swill
milk wasn't gone, but it was definitely on its way out. pg 135
Taking the Fear Out of Eating, Gallagher and Allred ISBN 0-521-43728
(pb) . Its an out of print book I happen to have. There is a chapter
on Food Laws: Avoiding the chicanery of yesteryear.

The anecdotes in the book about food adulteration in America up to the
early years of the 20th century are far more hair raising than any we
are reading in the press now. As for corporate greed (a polite term)
the America's best coprorations are still at it the recent oxycontin
case being a headline making case. Their top corporate officers had
been fined for misleading the public for years as to the opoid like
dependency effects of taking the medication.

It will also be helpful for you to read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_protein_export_scandal
Its a long and detail report on the subject

[Impact on human food supply
U.S. officials publicly say that they do not believe melamine alone to
be harmful to humans. However, there is too little data to determine
how it reacts with other substances, in particular, the combination of
melamine with cyanuric acid, a similar chemical known to be found in
the waste product of at least some methods of melamine production[77],
and which combination some American and Canadian scientists have
suggested may have led to the pet deaths through kidney
failure.[78][79][80] On May 25, in a US FDA/CSFAN Interim Melamine and
Analogues Safety/Risk Assessment, FDA stated: "While it is entirely
possible that the analogues are more or less potent than the parent
compound, melamine, we have no information that assesses the relative
potency of the three analogues as compared to melamine; therefore, for
the purpose of this interim assessment, we have made an assumption of
equal potency. It has been hypothesized that melamine may interact
synergistically with its three analogues, but no studies have been
conducted that specifically test this hypothesis. Very preliminary
work suggests that if it does occur, the formation of lattice
crystals, particularly between melamine and cyanuric acid, takes place
at very high dose levels and is a threshold and concentration
dependent phenomenon that would not be relevant to low levels of
exposure. Although still under investigation, it now appears that the
combination of melamine and cyanuric acid has been linked to the acute
renal failure in cats and dogs that have eaten the suspect pet
foods...."[81] ]

Just as China has just woke up to the fact that it will have to enact
new food safety laws it is equally obvious that the US will also have
to enact new laws and introduce new procedures on food and food
additives (see the above WIKI article about US firms adding suspect
additives.) The world is not perfect and one deals with the hiccups
as they arise.

Is that clear enough for you?

Its pretty clear to me that you are in that select group of people who
are extra quick to jump on someone to blame whenever something raises
your fears. If its a ethnically identifiable non white group and if
they are foreigners whose lifestyles and culture you have no
familarity with so much the better. Is that clear enough for you?
Anyway your problem is easy enough to deal with. Don't ever buy
Chinese and anything else non American made.

.

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