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Eat at Your Own Risk

Mike

Well-known member
Eat at your own risk -- U.S. safety rules weak
Unregulated imported food ingredients pose threat to humans, pets
PETER KOVACS WASHINGTON POST
Lost amid the anxiety surrounding the tainted U.S. pet food supply is this sobering reality: It's not just pet owners who should be worried. The uncontrolled distribution of low-quality imported food ingredients, mainly from China, poses a grave threat to public health worldwide.

Essential ingredients, such as vitamins used in many packaged foods, arrive at U.S. ports from China and, as recent news reports have underscored, are shipped without inspection to food and beverage distributors and manufacturers. Although they are used in relatively small quantities, these ingredients carry enormous risks for American consumers. One pound of tainted wheat gluten could, if undetected, contaminate as much as a thousand pounds of food.

Hygiene, labor challenges

Unlike imported beef, which is inspected at the point of processing by the U.S. Agriculture Department, few practical safeguards have been established to ensure the quality of food ingredients from China.Often, U.S. officials don't know where or how such ingredients were produced. We know, however, that alarms have been raised about hygiene and labor standards at many Chinese manufacturing facilities. In China, municipal water used in the manufacturing process is often contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides and other chemicals. Food ingredient production is particularly susceptible to environmental contamination.

Equally worrisome, U.S. officials often lack the capability to trace foreign-produced food ingredients to their source of manufacture. In theory, the Bioterrorism Prevention Act of 2001 provides some measure of traceability. In practice, the act is ineffective and was not designed for this challenge. Its enforcement is also shrouded in secrecy by the Department of Homeland Security.

Even if Food and Drug Administration regulators wanted to crack down on products emanating from the riskiest foreign facilities, they couldn't, because they have no way of knowing which ingredients come from which plant. This is why officials have spent weeks searching for the original Chinese source of the contaminated wheat gluten that triggered the pet food crisis.

That it was pet food that got tainted -- and that relatively few pets were harmed -- is pure happenstance. This spring, Europe narrowly averted disaster when a batch of vitamin A from China was found to be contaminated with Enterobacter sakazakii, which has been proved to cause infant deaths. Thankfully none went into infant formula.

China and vitamin C

Most of the world's vitamins are now made in China. The last U.S. plant making vitamin C closed a year ago. Given China's cheap labor, artificially low prices and the unfair competitive climate it has foisted on the industry, few Western producers of food ingredients can survive much longer.

Western companies have had to invest heavily in Chinese facilities. These Western-owned plants follow strict standards and are generally better managed than their locally owned counterparts. Nevertheless, 80 percent of the world's vitamin C is now manufactured in China -- much of it unregulated and some of it of questionable quality.

Europe is ahead of the United States in seeking greater accountability and traceability in food safety and importation. But even the European Union's "rapid alert system" is imperfect. More action is required to avoid catastrophes.

Improve traceability

To protect consumers here, we must revise our regulatory approaches. The first option is to institute regulations, based on the European model, to ensure that all food ingredients are thoroughly traceable. We should impose strict liability on manufacturers that fail to enforce traceability standards.

A draconian alternative is to mount a program modeled on USDA beef inspection for all food ingredients coming into the country. This regimen would require a significant commitment of resources and intensive training for hundreds of inspectors.

Food safety is a bipartisan issue: Congress and the administration must work together and move aggressively to devise stricter standards.

The United States is sitting on a powder keg with uncontrolled importing and the distribution of low-quality food ingredients. Before it explodes -- putting more animals and people at risk -- corrective steps must be taken.


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Peter Kovacs was president of NutraSweet Kelco Co. from 1994 to 1997. He is a management consultant to large food ingredient companies.
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Essential ingredients, such as vitamins used in many packaged foods, arrive at U.S. ports from China and, as recent news reports have underscored, are shipped without inspection to food and beverage distributors and manufacturers.

The South Africa report brings to three the number of Chinese products with melamine contamination — wheat gluten, rice protein concentrate and corn gluten.
Veterinarians and nutritionists said that other potential targets for tampering could include whey protein isolate, soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, soy grits and soy lecithin.

They need www.ScoringContainers.com records ! If they don't have traceback records ,don't export them ingredients to us!!!
 

PORKER

Well-known member
American food supply at risk
INSPECTIONS, STANDARDS NEEDED FOR GROWING IMPORTS FROM CHINA
Mercury News Editorial
Article Launched: 04/29/2007 01:42:51 AM PDT


The pet food crisis is forcing Americans to face a stomach-wrenching fact: The human food supply is little or no better protected than food for our dogs and cats.
That's true even of domestic products, as we learned from the spinach contamination in September, but even more so of imports from countries with lower food safety standards.

Who should be worried? Only those planning to continue eating.


The average American eats about 260 pounds of imported foods a year, according to reports. Fruits, vegetables, coffee, flours, processed food, oils and spices are all being imported at record rates from around the world.

The nation with one of the worst food export safety records in the world - China - now sends more than $2 billion of food to the United States every year, a 20-fold increase since 1997. If the current trend continues, it won't be long before the United States imports more food than it exports.

The United States should take four immediate steps to secure its food supply:

The Food and Drug Administration must be given the resources to dramatically increase food safety inspections, both at home and abroad. It's appalling that just over 1 percent of all imports are now being inspected at U.S. ports and borders, despite the fact that food imports have doubled in the past five years.

Food producers should be required to label products that contain ingredients from other nations.

Congress should act on Iowa Sen. Tom
Harkin's call for the FDA and the Department of Agriculture to conduct a thorough audit of the nation's food-safety system.
The United States should exert pressure on the World Trade Organization to impose stricter standards on foreign food producers. That would include tighter controls on the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. It would also mean improved methods for tracing the origin of products.

The most embarrassing revelation in the wake of the pet food contamination outbreak is an admission from the FDA's chief medical officer in the agency's food safety center. Dr. David Acheson told the Los Angeles Times he was unsure of the status of the FDA's plan to guard the nation's food supply against tainted exports. The problem? Lack of adequate funding. It's unacceptable that the Bush administration and Congress aren't giving the FDA the money to finish the plan to protect America's food supply.

The least the FDA can do is insist that food suppliers inform American consumers when they are digesting products that contain ingredients from other nations.

The silver lining may be an increased demand for purely American products, which would benefit the U.S. food industry.

American suppliers have their own food contamination issues. But they pale in comparison to problems in China, where poor safety records may lead to a substantial drop in U.S. imports.

High levels of pesticides and antibiotics have already caused the European Union and Japan to ban shrimp, fish and other fresh food products. The FDA has blocked some wheat gluten and rice protein products from China that are responsible for killing an unknown number of dogs and cats in the United States. Utah officials announced last week that 2,500 hogs from four farms would be euthanized because they may have eaten contaminated pet food scraps.

China's top officials admitted they have a significant problem with tainted products. But China has acknowledged problems before, only to see them repeated, because of poor controls at its multitude of small family farms.

Most Americans have no idea when they go to the supermarket where or how their purchases are being produced. That must change.

It's noteworthy that the United States' purchase of $2billion worth of food from China represents only 3.3 percent of our nation's food imports. Canada (20.6 percent) and Mexico (14.5 percent) send the most food products to the United States.

All told, the United States will import an estimated $69 billion this year in food products, accounting for about 13 percent of what Americans eat.

It's imperative that domestic and foreign food products meet Americans' safety and quality expectations
 
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