• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Here Ya Go MRJ....Chinese Seafood....Mmmmmm

Mike

Well-known member
Million Pounds of Suspect Chinese Seafood Lands in U.S. Despite FDA Screening Order
Tuesday , August 07, 2007


At least 1 million pounds of suspect Chinese seafood landed on American store shelves and dinner plates despite a Food and Drug Administration order that the shipments first be screened for banned drugs or chemicals, an Associated Press investigation found.

The frozen shrimp, catfish and eel arrived at U.S. ports under an "import alert," which meant the FDA was supposed to hold every shipment until it had passed a laboratory test.

But that was not what happened, according to an AP check of shipments since last fall. One of every four shipments the AP reviewed got through without being stopped and tested. The seafood, valued at $2.5 million, was equal to the amount 66,000 Americans eat in a year.

FDA officials stuck the pond-raised seafood on their watch list because of worries it contained suspected carcinogens or antibiotics not approved for seafood.

No illnesses have been reported, but the episode raises serious questions about the FDA's ability to police the safety of America's food imports.

"The system is outdated and it doesn't work well. They pretend it does, but it doesn't," said Carl R. Nielsen, who oversaw import inspections at the agency until he left in 2005 to start a consulting firm. "You can't make the assumption that these would be isolated instances."

If the system cannot stop known risks, Nielsen said, how can it protect against hidden dangers, such as the ingredients from China that made toothpaste potentially poisonous and killed dozens of pets earlier this year?

China is America's biggest foreign source of seafood, the 1.06 billion pounds it supplied in 2006 accounting for 16 percent of all seafood Americans buy.

President Bush has asked a Cabinet-level panel to recommend better imported food safety safeguards. Chinese officials have promised to inspect fish farms closely for the use of drugs and chemicals, even as they called the FDA's testing mandate illegal under world trade rules.

FDA officials acknowledged that some shipments slip through import alerts, but said overall they work.

"Any time you introduce a human element into something, I don't think you can necessarily guarantee 100 percent," said Michael Chappell, the official responsible for field inspections and labs.

Normally, the FDA inspects just 1 percent of the cargo it oversees. When goods land under an import alert, however, they are considered guilty until proven innocent: All shipments are supposed to be held until private tests that cost importers thousands of dollars show the seafood is clean. Sometimes, the FDA double-checks those tests in its own labs. Products can be detained for months, irking importers.

However, a shipment can escape inspection if, for example, a company uses a name or address not on an import alert, Chappell said. That appears to be what happened in one case AP found.

Also, FDA workers who must review hundreds of shipments that flash across a computer screen each day may miss some tagged for testing.

The agency has about 450 budgeted positions for screening approximately 20 million shipments annually of such things as fish, fruit and medical devices. At a congressional hearing last month, FDA employees doubted whether they have the resources to do the job.

Last summer, FDA labs began accumulating evidence that 15 percent of farm-raised shrimp, eel and catfish contained dangerous or unapproved substances. The agency started throwing individual companies on its watch list, and ultimately issued a sweeping mandate that all shrimp, eel and catfish raised on Chinese farms be stopped and tested.
Federal food safety officials said that while the seafood poses no immediate danger, long-term exposure could increase the risk of cancer or undermine the effectiveness of drugs used to fight outbreaks of disease.

The FDA did not tell shoppers to throw away what they had bought; agency officials said they simply had to get control over what China was sending.

Seafood that clears the ports enters a vast distribution system that includes restaurants, wholesalers and brand-name packagers.

The Chinese government and U.S. importers say the FDA overreacted. It would be impossible, importers say, for a person to eat enough seafood to be affected by the trace levels that FDA found of substances such as the antifungal chemical malachite green and the antibiotic Cipro.

The AP reviewed 4,300 manifests of seafood shipments from China compiled by Piers Reports, a company that tracks import-export data, and found 211 shipments that arrived under import alert since last fall.

FDA officials refused to identify exactly which shipments were tested, saying they were too busy to do so.

So the AP contacted importers directly, talking to 15 companies responsible for 112 of the 211 shipments. Eleven said their products were tested; four said the FDA did not bother to stop a total of 28 shipments weighing 1.1 million pounds. Virtually all the shipments entered through ports in the Southeast, including Tampa, Fla., Miami and Savannah, Ga.

The importer with the most cases was Florida-based Tampa Bay Fisheries.

Chief executive Robbie Paterson said 23 shipments of breaded or dusted frozen shrimp delivered between October and May were not inspected. In rare cases, the FDA removes from its watch list companies that have passed five straight tests. Paterson said he assumed that was why Tampa Bay's shipments went through.

Not so: Tampa Bay's shrimp supplier — the Fuqing City Dongyi Trading Co. — was on the watch list.

Three other companies said a total of five shipments of catfish, eel or shrimp were not stopped and tested.

Like many others in the importing business interviewed for this story, Paterson said he believed that import alerts were completely effective and that Chinese seafood poses no health risk.

FDA officials "are diligently doing the inspections as they see fit," Paterson said.

The expanded testing mandate has rattled China. U.S. importers said they are being told that the government is holding back shipments until tests show they will pass U.S. muster. The disruption has yet to result in any substantial price increases in the United States.

"I don't really know why they conducted the special test on our products," said a woman who identified herself as Miss Lin, a spokeswoman for Shantou Red Garden Foodstuff, which the FDA placed on its watch list in April after finding its dusted shrimp contained nitrofurans, an antibiotic that may cause cancer. "We've been exporting products to the U.S. for many years and we respect their standards and we meet their standards."
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
:x :x :x :x :mad: :mad: I'm feeding anything I find in the freezer that came from China to the raccoons and critters!!!! Damnation what a waste of $$$$$$$$$$$.
 

mrj

Well-known member
So, Mike..........anyone can write an 'expose', especially if it targets a Bush Admin. agency......and you take it as gospel truth????

You ignore the fact that 'sensationalism sells' is a motive for many 'journalists' and media sources.

You ignore that such stories can be used, if not generated, for the purpose of dramatizing the 'need' for gov't departments to increase their budgets and staff.

Did you miss the point that the quoted critic of the system is a former staffer who now markets his own 'consulting' skills, obviously with the intent to make a profit at it???

Didn't the comments that there was overreaction to the trace levels of contaminants discovered remind you the least bit of overreaction and damage to the cattle/beef industry by overblown, grossly exaggerated claims of dangers to people from hormones in beef? There was NO substance there. How do we know this is not similar?

The story, and some comments on this site over similar stories re. Chinese accuracy and honesty in complying with rules and regs do have at the least, a slight smell of racism. It is one thing to go after those who are proven to cheat on the rules.......and something else to ASSUME that every accusation is valid simply because they are the Chinese and their govt. has done bad things in the past, and probably still does. It seems to me that trade with them, with limits, and with consequences for malfeasance, is an opportunity to encourage them to move into more honorable actions.

Yes, surely, more and better inspections MAY be necessary. However, growing govt bureaucracy isn't always the best answer to problems. Each industry should be broadly represented in solutions to these problems, rather than the calls I hear for totally outside interests to do so, IMO. Do you really want someone who has no knowledge of cattle production and is certain that you must be doing bad things to your cattle and producing a food that is bad for people to write the rules under which you must operate your business? How many other cattle producers here would like to raise cattle under that scenario?

mrj
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Maxine
The story, and some comments on this site over similar stories re. Chinese accuracy and honesty in complying with rules and regs do have at the least, a slight smell of racism. It is one thing to go after those who are proven to cheat on the rules.......and something else to ASSUME that every accusation is valid simply because they are the Chinese and their govt. has done bad things in the past, and probably still does. It seems to me that trade with them, with limits, and with consequences for malfeasance, is an opportunity to encourage them to move into more honorable actions.


Maxine-- Your starting to sound like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in your "excuses" for everything that happens....

Yep we're all Chinese haters now :roll: :wink: :lol: Your blind protection of your corporate buddies have now gone over the wall
:( :lol: :lol: :lol:

Maxine
It is one thing to go after those who are proven to cheat on the rules.......and something else to ASSUME that every accusation is valid simply because they are the Chinese and their govt. has done bad things in the past, and probably still does.

Looks to me like they have reason...... :roll:

Last summer, FDA labs began accumulating evidence that 15 percent of farm-raised shrimp, eel and catfish contained dangerous or unapproved substances. The agency started throwing individual companies on its watch list, and ultimately issued a sweeping mandate that all shrimp, eel and catfish raised on Chinese farms be stopped and tested.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Tainted Chinese Imports Common
In Four Months, FDA Refused 298 Shipments

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007; Page A01

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

Now the confluence of two events -- the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week's resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China -- has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.

Dead pets and melamine-tainted food notwithstanding, change will prove difficult, policy experts say, in large part because U.S. companies have become so dependent on the Chinese economy that tighter rules on imports stand to harm the U.S. economy, too.

"So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible," said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm.

As a result, the United States finds itself "kowtowing to China," Cassidy said, even as that country keeps sending American consumers adulterated and mislabeled foods.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
This will be the Checkoffs new ad photo promoting the Chinese "meat" import trade if Maxine and her NCBA get their wishes :


Friedrat4.jpg


Somehow Sam Elliot saying "Fwyed Rat- Its whats for dinner" just doesn't turn me on as much as it does for Maxine.... :wink: :lol:
 

PORKER

Well-known member
Kiwis fret over what we eat
By YVONNE MARTIN - The Press | Saturday, 4 August 2007

Source of Article: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4152127a7144.html

New Zealand is a nation of food worriers but scientists believe people may be fretting over issues that pose little risk to their health.


A phone survey of 750 people for the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) found salmonella was the worst food fear, with 77 per cent being "very concerned" about it.

Antibiotics in meat (67 per cent) and campylobacter (63 per cent) were next.

Campbell, the NZFSA principal adviser of public health, was surprised salmonella was the most feared.

"I would have expected campylobacter to be higher than salmonella," he said.

Campylobacter had a greater impact on the community than salmonella. There were generally 10 times as many cases of campylobacter in a year than salmonella, said Campbell.

New Zealand had a 15 per cent rise in notified campylobacter cases last year to 15,873, compared with 1335 cases of salmonella.

Both are food-borne illnesses that have been associated with chicken and raw meats, and can cause symptoms of diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and headache.

Canterbury medical officer of health Alistair Humphrey put campylobacter high on his list of concerns.

But he said many other bugs lurked in food, including norovirus, of which there had been outbreaks in Christchurch.

Antibiotics used in animals for therapeutic purposes and to prevent disease may scare consumers towards vegetarianism, but "the evidence is of it being a very low risk," Campbell said.

Listeria was a rarer food-borne illness (19 cases nationally last year) but could have devastating consequences, he said. At least half of cases occurred in pregnant women and one in four of their babies died.

Listeria is linked to deli meats, poultry products, smoked seafoods, soft cheeses and pre-cooked sausages.

Participants were more spooked about the use of pesticides in food production and additives.

More than 60 per cent of participants were "very concerned" about their potential effects.

Campbell said these were more "perceived risk" than actual risk, as pesticides and additives were covered by regulations.

The authority commissions the surveys every few years to gauge public feeling and tailor its food safety messages. "We eat at least three times a day, so it matters to us all," Campbell said.

Genetically modified food greatly concerned 56 per cent of respondents, about the same as in two previous years, whereas a new category, food from cloned animals, worried 54 per cent.

Food allergies and irradiated food brought up the rear, with 47 per cent and 41 per cent respectively.
 

mrj

Well-known member
OT, of course you WANT to miss my points.......hope it makes you feel better about yourself...... if so, there might be SOME value in what you post.

You see "excuses" in everything except your own drivel! Maybe some see, as I do, that not every conspiracy theory holds water! That 'scares' and expose's are overdone in our litigious, blaming society.

Wouldn't be be wise to question those who continually write such fearmongering pieces? And to expand on legitimate recalls and warnings, practically accusing food companies of deliberately trying to make people sick????

I'm glad to see the Chinese finally attempting to join the rest of the world participating in trade, slow tho they may be in getting up to speed on food safety. Their society is opening up very rapidly by their standards. If I, living out in the boondocks as I do, know several young people from this country who are working and living in China, there must be many more from across the USA, and that surely will change peoples lives over there much faster in the future. Their access to internet and TV already is speeding up the changes.

15% of those sea food shipments containing trace amounts of possibly dangerous or unapproved substances just may not be much worse than what some very small businesses across this country pass off, or attempt to pass off as safe food, after all. Not saying it shouldn't be dealt with firmly, just that there is so much food moved about in this nation and the world, that it will take bureaucracy growth of a frightening proportions to give us the pristine foods we demand. And I don't believe bureaucracies are all that great at providing good service, unfortunately.

mrj
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
mrj said:
I'm glad to see the Chinese finally attempting to join the rest of the world participating in trade, slow tho they may be in getting up to speed on food safety. Their society is opening up very rapidly by their standards. If I, living out in the boondocks as I do, know several young people from this country who are working and living in China, there must be many more from across the USA, and that surely will change peoples lives over there much faster in the future. Their access to internet and TV already is speeding up the changes.

15% of those sea food shipments containing trace amounts of possibly dangerous or unapproved substances just may not be much worse than what some very small businesses across this country pass off, or attempt to pass off as safe food, after all. Not saying it shouldn't be dealt with firmly, just that there is so much food moved about in this nation and the world, that it will take bureaucracy growth of a frightening proportions to give us the pristine foods we demand. And I don't believe bureaucracies are all that great at providing good service, unfortunately.

mrj

Well Maxine-- I'm glad your so happy with China- and are satisfied with their food production methods and exports-- because now they are threatening to bankrupt our country if we don't trade under "their" rules...Besides being allowed to send us tainted food that may be killing us, they may be owning that bank of yours pretty soon... :( :mad:

China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar salesBy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 9:54am BST 08/08/2007



The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.


Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China's "nuclear option" in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.

Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing's foreign reserves should be used as a "bargaining chip" in talks with the US.

"Of course, China doesn't want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order," he added.

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went even further today, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse if it choose to do so.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/08/07/bcnchina107a.xml

Yep-- This may be the dinner served to you at your future Bank Board of Directors meetings...Good old GW and NCBA's wide open globalist trade policies has the country in quite a pickle....

Friedrat4.jpg
 

mrj

Well-known member
For the record, OT, I never said I approved everything China does. My point is that it is an improvement that they are making SOME moves toward giving their people more freedom and moving, however slightly, toward improving relationships with other nations.

Also for the record, I am not a director of any bank, nor do I "own" a bank. I do own a very few shares in a bank that has dozens, maybe a hundred or more other such owners. Whoopee Ding! Last I heard, it wasn't for sale, though.

Your doom and gloom attitudes like yours toward the US economy and world financial picture under the GWB administration is counterproductive and serves only those whowould attempt to undermine the people working at improving our economic condition through using their tax cuts to increase or improve our US businesses, IMO.

mrj
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
This former Reagan advisor sums it up quite well in these two paragraphs:

Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs.


This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China. It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into Chinese imports, and it was the “free trade, free market economists” who egged it on.

------------------------

August 8, 2007

Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now ...
Digging a Hole to China

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for the Chinese government observed that China’s considerable holdings of US dollars and Treasury bonds “contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.”

Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency to appreciate, “the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”

If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not on the Federal Reserve.

The precarious position of the US dollar as reserve currency has been thoroughly ignored and denied. The delusion that the US is “the world’s sole superpower,” whose currency is desirable regardless of its excess supply, reflects American hubris, not reality. This hubris is so extreme that only 6 weeks ago McKinsey Global Institute published a study that concluded that even a doubling of the US current account deficit to $1.6 trillion would pose no problem.

Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will quickly conclude that China’s power over the value of the dollar and US interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest part of the financing for Bush’s wars.

If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, Bush’s wars would end. The savings rate of US consumers is essentially zero, and several million are afflicted with mortgages that they cannot afford. With Bush’s budget in deficit and with no room in the US consumer’s budget for a tax increase, Bush’s wars can only be financed by foreigners.

No country on earth, except for Israel, supports the Bush regimes’ desire to attack Iran. It is China’s decision whether it calls in the US ambassador, and delivers the message that there will be no attack on Iran or further war unless the US is prepared to buy back $900 billion in US Treasury bonds and other dollar assets.

The US, of course, has no foreign reserves with which to make the purchase. The impact of such a large sale on US interest rates would wreck the US economy and effectively end Bush’s war-making capability. Moreover, other governments would likely follow the Chinese lead, as the main support for the US dollar has been China’s willingness to accumulate them. If the largest holder dumped the dollar, other countries would dump dollars, too.

The value and purchasing power of the US dollar would fall. When hard-pressed Americans went to Wal-Mart to make their purchases, the new prices would make them think they had wandered into Nieman Marcus. Americans would not be able to maintain their current living standard.

Simultaneously, Americans would be hit either with tax increases in order to close a budget deficit that foreigners will no longer finance or with large cuts in income security programs. The only other source of budgetary finance would be for the government to print money to pay its bills. In this event, Americans would experience inflation in addition to higher prices from dollar devaluation.

This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China. It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into Chinese imports, and it was the “free trade, free market economists” who egged it on.

How did a people as stupid as Americans get so full of hubris?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: [email protected]

http://www.counterpunch.org/


Friedrat4.jpg


MMMMMMMMMM-Looks Good- don't it Maxine? I wonder if it was breaded in Melamine protein added flour :???:
 
Top