Is China's Food Production Poisoning Us?

[PORKER]

April 26, 2007, 7:28AM
Utah: Hogs Tested for Harmful Chemical


By DEBBIE HUMMEL Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — The state is testing hogs from three northern Utah farms to see if they ate pet food that was contaminated with an industrial chemical, agriculture officials said Wednesday.

There's a possibility the hogs ate feed made from "scraps and sweepings" from American Nutrition, a pet food plant in Ogden that received potentially contaminated rice protein concentrate from China, said Leonard Blackham, commissioner of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

Remnants and leftovers from the manufacture of pet food are often used in feed for livestock. Investigators are looking into feed that may have come from pet food plants that could have received rice protein concentrate and corn gluten from China that was contaminated with the chemical melamine.

State tests of the rice protein from American Nutrition were negative for melamine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has done its own test and results should be back Friday.

A message left by The Associated Press for a manager at American Nutrition was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Blackham said a total of 60 hogs from the three farms will be tested for melamine. The three farms have a total of 1,000 to 2,000 hogs, he said. As a precaution, the farms have been asked not to send their hogs to market, but they are not under quarantine.

"There's no reason to put off eating pork," Blackham said.

The results of the hog testing could be available later next week, said state veterinarian Earl Rogers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service is investigating farms in Utah, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, New York and maybe Ohio after reports that hog feed could have been contaminated with the chemical blamed for more than a dozen pet deaths across the country.

Melamine is a nitrogen-rich chemical most commonly used to make resins that can be molded into products such as countertops, kitchen utensils or dinnerware. It is also a byproduct of several pesticides. There have been no studies on how humans react to ingesting melamine, said Utah Department of Health spokeswoman Charla Haley.

Melamine appears to have caused acute kidney failure in pets that died or were sickened after eating pet food contaminated with the chemical in recent months.

No Utah hogs have died. It's not known if melamine accumulates in hog tissue, Blackham said.

Production at the three Utah farms accounts for less than 1 percent of hog production in Utah, Rogers said.

UPDATE: FDA admits the problem may go back as far as summer of 2006. Also, says up to 10 firms sold tainted pet food as animal feed.

 

[PORKER]

Toronto (eCanadaNow) - At least 45 people are reported to have eaten pork which came from a hog farm in Ceres, California in the United States where pigs from the American Hog Farm were fed pet food which was recalled because it was contaminated with the chemical melamine.

So far none of the individuals have experienced signs of illnesses, but it is not known what effect the chemical, when ingested, has on humans because no major study has taken place on melamine.

On April 21, at least seven urine samples taken from pigs at hog farm, were tested and the results came back positive for the chemical melamine. At least three samples from the feed used to feed the pigs were tested and those results also came back positive for melamine.

 

[PORKER]

Filler in animal feed is open secret in China

By David Barboza and Alexei Barrionuevo
Published: April 29, 2007

ZHANGQIU, China: As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called 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.

"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."

Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths of at least 16 pets in the United States.

No one knows exactly how melamine (which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.

The

link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.

"They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. "Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional."

Now, with evidence mounting that the tainted wheat gluten came from China, American regulators have been granted permission to visit the region to conduct inspections of food treatment facilities.

The Food and Drug Administration has already banned imports of wheat gluten from China after it received more than 14,000 reports of pets believed to have been sickened by packaged food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one pet food supplier.

The Department of Agriculture has also stepped in. On Thursday, the agency ordered more than 6,000 hogs to be quarantined or slaughtered after some of the pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states, including California.

Scientists are now trying to determine whether melamine could be harmful to humans.

The pet food case is also putting China's agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China's food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

For its part, Chinese officials dispute any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But regulators here on Friday banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.

Yet what is clear from visiting this region of northeast China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.

Many animal feed operators here advertise on the Internet, seeking to purchase melamine scrap. The Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, one of the companies that American regulators named as having shipped melamine-tainted wheat gluten to the United States, had posted such a notice on the Internet last March.

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is then used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, golf ball-size chunks of white rock, is sometimes being sold to local agricultural entrepreneurs, who say they mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that is high in protein.

"It just saves money if you add melamine scrap," said the manager of an animal feed factory here.

Last
Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, two animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine scrap, whose chemical properties help the feed register an inflated protein level.

Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea — another nitrogen-rich chemical — is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily detected in China as well as in the United States.

"People use melamine scrap to boost nitrogen levels for the tests," said the manager of the animal feed factory. "If you add it in small quantities, it won't hurt the animals."

The manager, who works at a small animal feed operation here that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas, said he has mixed melamine scrap into animal feed for years.

He said he was not currently using melamine. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color to match the right feed stock.

He said that melamine used in pet food would probably not be harmful. "Pets are not like pigs or chickens," he said casually, explaining that they can afford to eat less protein. "They don't need to grow fast."

The resulting melamine-tainted feed would be weak in protein, he acknowledged, which means the feed is less nutritious.

But, by using the melamine additive, the feed seller makes a heftier profit because melamine scrap is much cheaper than soy, wheat or corn protein.

"It's true you can make a lot more profit by putting melamine in," said another animal feed seller here in Zhangqiu. "Melamine will cost you about $1.20 for each protein count per ton whereas real protein costs you about $6, so you can see the difference."

Feed producers who use melamine here say the tainted feed is often shipped to feed mills in the Yangtze River Delta, near Shanghai, or down to Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong. They also said they knew that some melamine-laced feed had been exported to other parts of Asia, including South Korea, North Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.

Evidence is mounting 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.

Indeed, few people outside the agriculture business know about the use of melamine scrap. The Chinese news media — which is strictly censored — has not reported much about the country's ties to the pet food recall in the United States. And few in agriculture here do not see any harm in using melamine in small doses; they simply see it as cheating a little on protein, not harming animals or pets.

As for the sale of melamine scrap, it is increasingly popular as a fake ingredient in feed, traders and workers here say.

At the Hebei Haixing Insect Net Factory in nearby Hebei Province, which makes animal feed, a manager named Guo Qingyin said: "In the past melamine scrap was free, but the price has been going up in the past few years. Consumption of melamine scrap is probably bigger than that of urea in the animal feed industry now."

And so melamine producers like the ones here in Zhangqiu are busy.

A man named Jing, who works in the sales department at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory here, said on Friday that prices have been rising, but he said that he had no idea how the company's melamine scrap is used.

"We have an auction for melamine scrap every three months," he said. "I haven't heard of it being added to animal feed. It's not for animal feed."

David Barboza reported from Zhangqiu and Alexei Barrionuevo reported from Chicago. Rujun Shen also contributed reporting from Zhangqiu.

 

[PORKER]

TAINTED FEED
TheStar.com - News -

Scientists close in on source of pet deaths


Apr 28, 2007 04:30 AM
Tanya Talaga
Health Reporter

Guelph Ont. scientists may be closer to figuring out why North American pets are dying from contaminated food.

Two of the chemicals U.S. authorities say they've found in food additives from China – melamine and cyanuric acid – can react to form crystals that could block kidney function, according to the University of Guelph's Agriculture and Food Laboratory.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration found melamine, which is used to make plastic, in wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate in some pet foods. They've also found cyanuric acid, a chemical used to treat water in swimming pools, in wheat gluten.

So far, 16 pets have died, but experts say that number is low. Dozens of contaminated pet food products have been recalled.

"This is a piece of the puzzle, a significant finding," said John Melichercik, director of analytical services for Guelph's laboratory services. "We have found these crystals in cats that have suffered renal failure."

American health authorities have implicated the two compounds, but because neither seemed sufficiently toxic on its own, it was unclear how they were involved. But both compounds are something "you wouldn't expect to see in pet food," Melichercik said.

Experiments in Guelph showed the chemical composition of the crystals formed by the reaction of the two compounds matched the urinary crystals in the dead animals. But Melichercik said the crystals weren't entirely made up of melamine and cyanuric acid. "When we see some of these substances, there is other junk in there that is difficult to identify," he said.

 

[PORKER]

20 million chickens may have eaten tainted feed
Poultry must be assessed by government before it's processed, USDA says.


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Updated: 57 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Federal officials on Friday placed a hold on 20 million chickens raised for market in several states because their feed was mixed with pet food containing an industrial chemical.

Three government agencies — the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency — are overseeing a risk assessment to determine whether the chickens would pose a threat to human health if eaten, USDA spokesman Keith Williams said. The assessment may be completed as early as Monday.

The 20 million chickens represent a tiny fraction of the 9 billion chickens raised each year in the United States. Meat from the birds can't go into commercial use without the USDA's inspection seal, which is being withheld until the risk assessment is completed, Williams said.
Which states have chicken producers affected by the hold will be disclosed later, Williams said.

Investigators have found that about 5 percent of feed used at some smaller chicken production operations contains the chemical melamine, Williams said. Larger manufacturers, because they usually use special feed for the chickens they raise or contract for raising, are unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products, he said.

As of Friday, no melamine had been detected in the feed used by larger manufacturers, Williams said. However, because investigators know some of the tainted pet food was used in the chicken feed, officials placed a hold on the birds, he said.

Since March 16, more than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled because they were contaminated with melamine. An unknown number of dogs and cats have been sickened or died after eating pet food tainted with the chemical.The U.S. Agriculture Department said on Friday as many as 20 million chickens currently on U.S. farms in several states may have been fed contaminated feed.

A USDA official said the birds must be held until the government can complete a risk assessment to determine if they can be processed. The results could come as early as Monday.

The birds were among those believed to have been given contaminated feed with pet food containing melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer. It is uncertain how many chickens have been processed.

Health Ministry officials acknowledge problems, but have described scandals such as the 2004 baby formula deaths as isolated incidents. Neither the ministry nor State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, responsible for overall food safety standards, responded to questions submitted to them in writing as requested.

Over the past 25 years, Chinese agricultural exports to the United States surged nearly 20-fold to $2.26 billion last year, led by poultry products, sausage casings, shellfish, spices and apple juice.

Inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are able to check only a tiny percentage of the millions of shipments that enter the United States each year.

Even so, shipments from China were rejected at the rate of about 200 per month this year, the largest from any country, compared to about 18 for Thailand, and 35 for Italy, also big exporters to the United States, according to data posted on the FDA's Web site.

Chinese products are bounced for containing pesticides, antibiotics and other potentially harmful chemicals, and false or incomplete labeling that sometimes omits the producer's name.

To protect its foreign markets, China is trying to set up a dedicated export supply chain, sealed off from the domestic market, said Keyzer.

 

[PORKER]

Pet Food Recall Spreads To Fish, FDA Says Ingredients Mislabeled
Posted on Tuesday, 8 of May ,
2007 at 8:32 pm
The pet and human food contamination scandal widened Tuesday as federal agencies announced that now the nation's fish supply has been compromised due to contaminated Canadian feed having been fed to farm fish.

Additionally, federal officials said it's wheat flour, not wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, that is at the heart of the massive pet food recall after the death and illness of thousands of cats and dogs from kidney failure.

At a press conference held Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department announced that wheat flour, mislabeled as wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, is actually the melamine-contaminated ingredient that has been the focus of a massive pet food recall, not wheat gluten or rice protein concentrate as previously believed and told the American public.

Levels of melamine in meat products from animals given contaminated feed are very low and pose little risk to humans if eaten, officials reiterated. None of these ingredients has been used in the human food supply.

The officials said that a portion of the mislabeled wheat gluten has been used in the preparation of fish feeds and has been used in some U.S. aquaculture production operations. Officials stated that levels of melamine in affected fish tested so far have been comparable to those found in hogs and chickens.

A transcript of the conference can be found at http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2007/05/0134.xml

Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection with the FDA, said that they had learned that a portion of the mislabeled wheat gluten from Chinese manufacturers had been sent to Canada and when in Canada, was used to manufacture fishmeal. Acheson said that fishmeal was then imported back into the United States for use in feeding fish in certain industrial aquaculture type situations.

The ingredients came from two Chinese firms: Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. and Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd.

In essence, Acheson appeared to be shifting the blame from the United States to Canada.

"As with the situation with the poultry and the hogs, the levels that we're seeing in the fishmeal are very comparable, and therefore based on the risk assessment we do not believe there is any significant human health risk associated with consuming these fish", Acheson said. "The investigation is very active at this point. We know of a number of firms that received this fishmeal and our investigators are as we speak getting out there to those firms to determine just exactly what they are doing with the fish that were fed this fishmeal".

"We have so far managed to get to one of these establishments where we confirmed the positive finding, and that particular establishment is dealing with very small fish that are ones that are I believe called fry or small. So these are tiny fish that are not yet ready for human consumption anyway. That is really just the current state of this investigation".

Farmed fish are usually sold for direct consumption or for stocking lakes and streams.

Initially, FDA said that the Canadian-made meal purportedly contained wheat gluten, a source of protein which Chinese manufacturers allegedly intentionally added to their products in order to make it appear higher in protein than they actually were. Now, U.S. inspectors say that material contaminated with melamine was actually wheat flour.

For nearly two months, since Menu Foods of Canada, a major pet food manufacturer announced that they were recalling nearly 100 brands of pet food believed to be responsible for the deaths and serious illness of dogs and cats by kidney failure, the nation has apprehensively read of increasing recalls of pet food on nearly a daily basis. So far, at least 16 companies have announced recalls.

Menu Foods is currently facing more than 50 lawsuits and have in turned sued ChemNutra who they claim supplied them.

As pet owners were struggling to find something they felt was safe to feed their cats and dogs, the federal government announced that the nation's pork products were at risk because farmers had fed their pigs the salvaged contaminated pet food, those products which had been found to have been contaminated by melamine, a substance not approved for food in the United States. The food that was suspected of killing cats and dogs was being fed to animals meant for human consumption.

As consumers became more and more wary that the FDA is withholding information about the safety of the nation's food supply, both for human consumption as well as for pets, the agency created the position of assistant commissioner for food protection "to provide advice and counsel to the commissioner on strategic and substantive food safety and food defense matters".

After USDA and FDA declared that the nation's pork supply was safe and there was a minimal risk, they then announced that byproducts from pet food manufactured with contaminated wheat gluten imported from China had been used in chicken feed on some farms in the state of Indiana.

At least 30 broiler poultry farms and eight breeder poultry farms in Indiana received contaminated feed in early February and fed it to poultry within days of receiving it. All of the broilers believed to have been fed contaminated product have since been processed. The breeders that were fed the contaminated product are under voluntary hold by the flock owners, and over the weekend, it was announced that 20 million chickens were on hold. They were released for market on Monday.

Initially, FDA identified the contamination as originating with wheat gluten from just one pet food manufacturer, obtained from one importer from China, ChemNutra but now the contamination has spread to more than a dozen manufacturers of wet and dry pet foods as well as treats, hundreds of foods, and expanded to rice protein concentrate from Wilbur-Ellis.

Melamine, a chemical found in plastics, pesticides and fertilizer, is not approved for use in pet or human food in the United States.

To read the North Country Gazette's continuing coverage on the pet food recall and contamination of food for human consumption, see the archives at www.northcountrygazette.org 5-08-07

 

[PORKER]

Melamine Scandal Spreads to Canadian Salmon Farms and Washington State Hatcheries; USDA Lets Tainted Fish Cross U.S. Border For Sale in Stores

"By GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News

"SEATTLE — The pet food recall investigation has expanded into another human food source. The Food and Drug Administration says Canadian fish meal makers apparently used some pet food tainted with melamine … to make the pellets fish farms use to feed hungry salmon.

"The organization is sending inspectors to check out the feed used by fish farming operations in Canada and the United States. They have found several facilities where it was used, but say it is not necessary – at this time - to pull farmed fish off the market. 'We do not believe that there is any significant human health risk associated with consuming these fish,' said Acheson, of the FDA. But the FDA is sending agents to those facilities to find out what they are doing with fish that ate the meal. …

"State agriculture officials say … they don't know too much more than this: One shipment of fish food was stopped and held at the border until the FDA stepped in and let it pass. The situation has many retailers, including the Ballard Market, avoiding farmed fish all together.

"But the tainted feed may also have been used to feed hatchery fish … released into the wild … [and] caught by sport and commercial fishers. Officials from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife say they purchased the tainted product for six state hatcheries and most was fed to fish before the problem was discovered. It has since removed the product but some of the fish that ate it were already released into the wild."

 

[Econ101]

Dr. David Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection with the FDA, said that they had learned that a portion of the mislabeled wheat gluten from Chinese manufacturers had been sent to Canada and when in Canada, was used to manufacture fishmeal. Acheson said that fishmeal was then imported back into the United States for use in feeding fish in certain industrial aquaculture type situations.

So just what are they going to put in the chickens they send over to China and back? Do we have to be surprised by that too?

 

[PORKER]

The Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that melamine has been found in fish feed at the Marion Folks Hatchery in Oregon.

The manager at the hatchery discontinued use of the feed, labeled as Bio Vita Starter, when the FDA contacted him about testing. The grade of food is used as a starter diet for juvenile salmon and trout.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife contacted the company to find out if the feed was shipped to other hatcheries. Representatives from the Skretting Co. confirmed that the same lot was sent to the Willamette, Gnat Creek, Big Creek, Cole Rivers, Butte Falls and Leaburg hatcheries.

 

[rider]

The chickens always going running, hiding, and suffocating. Can't seem to keep from dying.

 

[PORKER]

However, the FDA also said it planned to begin testing a wide variety of vegetable proteins at firms that imported the ingredients to make everything from pizza dough to infant formula, and protein shakes to energy bars. The ingredient list includes wheat gluten, corn gluten, corn meal, soy proteins and rice brans and now all milled FLOURS.

 

[Anonymous]

firms that imported the ingredients to make everything from pizza dough to infant formula

Thats scarey- when they say they "will begin" testing- which leads me to believe they have been doing no testing.... :shock:

 

[PORKER]

Georgie Anne Geyer

PUT PRESSURE ON CHINA TO IMPROVE ITS FOOD SAFETY

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Several years ago, I was doing research on how different ancient cultures had looked at the cats they found among them. Many of those cultures -- the Egyptian, the Siamese, the Burmese, the Japanese and the Turkish -- considered cats to be royal and sacred creatures, representative of the deepest spiritual yearnings of their societies.
But when it came to the Chinese vs. the Japanese, I was surprised at what I found. All through their history, the Japanese depicted their little bobtail cats in the most exquisite aesthetic terms; they graced great paintings and their statues sat on the altars of Buddhist temples.

But how different the Chinese were, even then! For across the board, even while they used it as decoration on their vases, the Chinese saw the cat only in terms of "How many mice can it catch?" It was a utilitarian creature and, later, a target of cruel consumption.

I could not help but think of this early warning about Chinese attitudes toward animals these last few weeks as the pet food scandal broke, with unregulated Chinese products poisoning innumerable American and Canadian cats and dogs. And when you have gone through a market, like the one I saw in Chungking, with pitiful dogs lining up to be slaughtered -- or you hear about the special "raccoon dogs," which are literally skinned alive for their pelts -- you can only come to the conclusion that we really must stop treating China as some civilized country with whom we want to continue to do "business as usual."

The pet food scandal was revealed several weeks ago because of the sudden deaths of countless pets through liver poisoning; it was subsequently discovered that a number of Chinese firms were using a white, gypsum-like substance called melamine to provide cheap bulk to pet food -- bulk that approximated protein in examination but was instead also poisonous.

But that was only the beginning. Now the poisoned Chinese food chain has reached out across the world well beyond the recall of 60 million (as of now) packages of pet food: catfish illegally contaminated with antibiotics; counterfeit glycerin that is named as the cause of at least 365 deaths in Panama; chickens that had to be destroyed because of tainted Chinese food; severe malnutrition in Chinese children from fake milk powder; soy sauce made from human hair; cuttlefish soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color, and eels fed contraceptive pills to make them grow longer and slimmer.

I recall, on the many times I've been to China, that I would occasionally ask exactly what it was that we were eating. I don't know now whether I'm glad or sorry that they often smiled oddly ambiguous smiles and seldom answered the question.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the U.S., adds that the United States should be watching the fur issue. "The Chinese are trying to sell a lot of fur in the U.S.," he told me, "like trim for parkas. There are two big issues. They advertise it as faux fur but, in the cases we know about, it turned out to be the fur of domestic dogs. ... There are few limits on what they do in China. They badly need an internal animal welfare group. There have been internal outcries about the killing of dogs for food, and we surely protested. But theirs is a totally consumptive view of animals."

We are, of course, talking about a huge market. China's agricultural exports to the United States surged to $2.26 billion last year, according to U.S. figures, which is more than 20 times the $133 million of 1980. The U.S. has a $232 billion trade deficit with China, and so has put itself in the position of an economic supplicant rather than a world power. The country's financial reserves are $1.2 trillion as of this writing, and growing at $1.2 billion a day.

So what exactly can the United States, Europe and other affected countries do against a country whose lack of regulations and laissez-faire attitude toward food standards could be poisoning us all, pets and humans alike? Actually, plenty!

Above all, China seeks a place in the world alongside the big, industrialized societies. We must tell China that it will not get that place until it begins to abide by the rules of the Big Boys. This can be done through innumerable international organizations, as well as tough private diplomacy. Individual consumers could stop buying Chinese porducts.

Get the American Chamber of Commerce in China, which has acted shamelessly, not as America's trade representative in China but as China's lobby in America, off its duff. Write to it; embarrass it. Send pictures of poisoned pet dogs and cats and suggest, not kindly, that it start shaming the Chinese for their heartlessness.

Support efforts by the budding young elite classes in China, who are now getting their own pets, to start a humane society. Shame them, too. Suggest to them that they study the cases of Singapore, where the once-disdained little "drain cats" have been bred into the beautiful "Singapura" breed, now the national cat of Singapore, or Turkey, where the Angoras and the Turkish Van cats are the national cats of that country.

Meanwhile, work here to get family pets named officially as "members of the family." This started with Katrina, when FEMA and other rescuers left family pets to die, breaking the hearts of untold thousands. Because there was such an outcry, that will not happen again, but there is a major discussion now going on in the nation as to how much of a family member a beloved cat or dog is.

Civil judgments increasingly acknowledge the emotional value of pets to humans, for instance, and cruelty to animals is a felony in 42 states. Were this trend even stronger, people who lost pets to Chinese negligence, corruption and greed would be in a far stronger position to bring legal action against the pet food companies and perhaps the Chinese parties themselves.

Until then, when you go to China, enjoy the art and the physical beauty of the country, but look deeply into the eyes of the people and talk "pets." Don't give them a moment's peace. They don't deserve it.

COPYRIGHT 2007 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

 

[Econ101]

Please don't forget the bad meat that was sent to Mexico (Philipines) by the Chinese.

 

[PORKER]

They have a habit of sending JUNK FOOD EVERYWHERE that will have taken advantage of your wallet and YOUR HEALTH !

 

[PORKER]

In the United States and Europe, Chinese-made products ranging from T-shirts to toys may flood the markets, but when it comes to food, the made in China label still remains a minority, particularly for fresh produce. For the Asian region at large, China`s vast territory is also a source of food imports, much of it unprocessed and without any labeling.

Reports of Chinese-farmed vegetables grown by using chemicals banned in Japan or unsanitary conditions appear on a regular basis. For instance, fresh spinach grown with banned chemicals was recalled from supermarkets across Japan about a year ago, while about three years ago, the Japanese arm of Boston-based Mister Donuts saw its fortunes slump after it was found that their sandwiches were made using spring onions from China that were infected with the E. coli 0-157 bacteria.

Indeed, the international environmental group Greenpeace found last year that of all the Chinese-grown produce sold in Hong Kong supermarkets, 25 percent of the sampled fruit and vegetables were tainted with fertilizers that have been deemed unsafe for human consumption by the group.

At the basement food hall of Tokyo`s Seibu department store Thursday, women flocked to buy fresh organic greens from a farmer in western Japan priced about $8 for a small handful. A few boxes down, a similar-looking bag of leaves was being sold for less than half that price, but there seemingly were no interested buyers.

'That`s made in China. You just can`t be sure what chemicals were used to grow them ... I don`t want to put my body at risk like that,' said Maki Tateshina, who was shopping on her way back home from work. She added, 'If I`m eating it, I want to make sure it`s safe. And I really don`t have that confidence about Chinese produce.'

 

[PORKER]

Blue ear pig disease in China
This post was written by Nancy Reyes on 9 May, 2007 (16:11) | All News, Science News, Medical News, Business News, China News

Don't you love the way they name diseases?
We have Kawasaki's disease, named after Dr. Kawasaki who described it. We have Legionaire's disease, named after the Legionaire convention where it was first noticed, and we have the various pox diseases that cause…pox or pimples.
Well, Blue Ear disease is a slow disease that makes pigs tired and sickly, and early in the course of the disease their ears turn blue.
China is having an epidemic that is killing pigs; they tried to keep it quiet, but the news leaked out. It is Blue ear pig disease, AKA Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS).
PRRS doesn't attack the pig's lungs like Influenza, it attacks one of the white blood cells that ordinarily kill other diseases, and so the pig ends up dying of those other diseases, like pneumonia. It is a slow disease, and the R for reproductive is because piglets often die before birth and are stillborn, or are born weakened and quickly die.
Although PRRS hits the white cells, it is not the same as HIV or AIDS which hits the T cells of the white blood cells.
You can go to the LINK for more information if you are interested. However, the disease does not affect humans, which is the good news.
The bad news is that wind can spread it one mile, infected pigs can spread it, and shoes that have barnyard dirt can spread it.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. Her website is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket.

And They export pork ears and casings to the US.

 

[PORKER]

FDA press report today of the largest feed contamation in US history; Questions?

CNN: Tell us more about the test? Pork can be released? Testing only for melamine? Risk has gone up because of cyanuric acid? Testing pigs for cyanuric acid, too?

FDA Petersen: Test is specific for melamine. We've been looking at levels of 10 parts per billion. In validating test, the scientists agreed that today, they are comfortable saying the limit of detection is 50 parts per billion, so this is more conservative. Specific to melamine. Test was validated. Test methodology was reviewed by peers in laboratory community. Pursuing additional design.

FDA Acheson: Current assay of pork muscle is a melamine assay. Can't measure cyanuric acid. But risk assessment measured that. Know levels of cyanuric acid. Those levels have been built into risk assessment. Taken both into account. Assays are just melamine. No indication that we're aware of that cyanuric acid is likely to significantly bioaccumlate in the hogs. Is essentially a "breakdown product" of melamine. Not likely to affect results.

Carrie Peyton-Dahlberg, Sacramento Bee: What were parts per million of melamine found in the meat?

FDA Petersen: Test was that 50 ppb is the cutoff.

She cuts him off…. what were the ACTUAL ppb test results?

FDA Petersen: NONE were over 50. One university reported number in 10-12 ppb. "50 is quote likely where we may end up at the end of the day."

Bee: Who devised the test.

FDA Petersen: Our laboratory out on the west coast.

 

[PORKER]

May 20, 2007 11:08am
Article from: Agence France-Presse

WHEN Bangladeshi magistrate Rokon-ud-Dowla raided a local fish market to check on the quality of the food for sale, he was shocked by what he discovered.

"We found all 176 tonnes of fish in the market containing harmful formaldehydes," he said.

"We also sealed off dozens of bakeries and confectionery shops for using textile and tannery dyes on sweets in a bid to make them colourful."

Across Asia governments appear to be struggling to control the use of toxic chemicals in manufactured and fresh food, chemicals that experts believe are responsible for deteriorating public health.

Formaldehyde seems to be one of the most widely found chemicals, used for everything from keeping flies off fresh meat in wet markets to prolonging freshness and enhancing the colour of manufactured foodstuffs.

Boric and benzoic acid, industrial dyes, fertilisers and pesticides, antibiotics, bad oil and sulphur dioxide are among the substances found in fresh and packaged foodstuffs throughout Asia.

Experts across the region are beginning to blame a range of illnesses, including rising cancer rates, liver and kidney ailments, stunted mental and physical development in children - and, in extreme cases, death - on adulterated food.

"We have been eating these foods for decades. I think these foods are the reason why we have increasing numbers of liver and kidney ailments," said Rokon-ud-Dowla.

"These manufacturers are killing thousands of people, yet we didn't notice."

The March raid on the fish market was part of an official clamp down on what he called the rampant use of toxins in food.

"Use of chemicals, fertiliser, poor quality oil, textile and tannery dyes and food additives (such as) formaldehydes are being practised rampantly in Bangladesh, said Rokon-ud-Dowla, who has been at the forefront of the fight.

"Some of the practices that we have seen in their shops and factories are horrible," he said.

Among the most notorious violators of food safety standards is China, where two companies were found this month to have added a lethal chemical, melamine, to wheat gluten and rice protein which was later used in pet food believed to have killed thousands of dogs and cats in the US.

In an effort to clean up the country's reputation as an exporter of dodgy foodstuffs, authorities in Shanghai have launched a mobile food testing van they say can quickly tell whether food is safe to eat.

The addition of dangerous substances to foods in China is chronic and widespread.

The government's apparent inability to police a huge and growing food-product sector and widespread ignorance of the harmful effects of many substances have combined with a rush for profit to create a major health threat.

Reports of farmers using dangerous pesticides and fertilisers to increase yields are routine, and livestock are often given questionable medicines or antibiotics.

In one recent case, Hong Kong and various local governments along China's east coast banned sales of turbot produced in eastern China after some were found to contain cancer-causing residues.

A similar problem is playing out in the US, where several states have banned imports of Chinese catfish after traces of a poisonous antibiotic were found.

Sometimes health risks are created for merely cosmetic reasons, as when Chinese producers last year used the cancer-causing dye Sudan Red, normally used for colouring solvents and shoe and floor polish, to colour duck egg yolks and chilli oil.

Perhaps the highest-profile recent case was in 2004, when 13 babies died in central China and nearly 200 suffered malnutrition after drinking milk made with fake powder.

Chinese chemicals have also made their way into the foodchain in Vietnam where authorities have become so alarmed at the prevalence of adulterated food that Professor Nguyen Ba Duc of the Vietnam Cancer Association has blamed one third of the 150,000 annual cancer cases on tainted food.

Government health inspectors have found formaldehyde in the national dish, pho noodle soup, borax in traditional cakes, and whitening chemicals in rice noodles.

In March, the health ministry's drug administration ordered the nationwide confiscation of Chinese-made lipsticks, other cosmetics and foods containing Sudan Red.

State media reported suspicions it was also used in eggs and chilli products.

Formaldehyde has also been problematic in Indonesia, where the Food and Drug Agency found that nearly 60 per cent of noodles, salty fish, tofu and meatballs sold in Jakarta markets contained high levels of the preservative.

Producers had been hard hit by fuel price rises in late 2005 and so had cut back on more expensive ingredients in their foods, said Tulus Abadi, of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation.

Random checks of markets and street vendors in Jakarta this year found banned dangerous substances, including formaldehyde and sodium borate, were still being used, he said.

India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says the most common forms of food adulteration or excess preservatives concern cooking oil and milk, and in packaged foods that are now flooding the market.

While poor labelling was a major problem, widespread use of preservatives to keep food fresh as it is transported over long distances was also a concern.

Radna Krishnan, editor of the All India Food Preservers Association newsletter said: "Most of the focus is on preservatives because of transport difficulties in India and the most widely used are sulfur dioxide, a gas, for fruits and vegetables."

The gas, important in wine making and processing of dried fruits, is used widely globally but when used in excess, can cause breathing and heart problems, according to the US Environmental Protection Administration.

We need COOL NOW,not LATER

 

[PORKER]

FDA Finds Melamine in Chinese Catfish Today
READ MORE: Food and Drug Administration
Tests conducted at a US Food & Drug Administration laboratory on behalf of the Arkansas Department of Health & Human Services have detected melamine in at least one sample of imported Chinese catfish. And while officials are downplaying the health hazard, this latest finding suggests that the human food supply is much more widely contaminated than previously acknowledged.

Not that this should come as a surprise. Back on April 1, when I first started covering this story at length, I wrote:

"Unless and until the FDA determines otherwise, one cannot help but wonder if our sick and dying cats are merely the canary in the coal mine alerting us to a broader contamination of the human food supply."
Three weeks later, when we learned that melamine had tainted chickens, I congratulated myself on my prescience and specifically warned that "a huge swath of our food supply has been compromised ... including farmed fish." Then on May 8, after more details of our expanding food safety crisis had emerged, I elaborated:

According to recent studies, 81-percent of America's seafood is imported, and about 40-percent of that is farmed. China is the world's aquaculture leader, accounting for about 70-percent of global production. It is also a major U.S. supplier of farm-raised shrimp, catfish, tilapia, carp, clams, eel and other aquaculture products.
We now know that it is common practice in China to spike the nitrogen level of livestock feed by adulterating the product with both scrap melamine and scrap cyanuric acid. And it has also been widely reported that this contaminated feed is routinely used in China's burgeoning aquaculture industry.

[...] Fish physiology can leave them particularly prone to bio-accumulating certain contaminants, and the nature of common aquaculture practices tends to exacerbate the problem. Farmed seafood raised on a steady diet of contaminated feed would surely retain some of the toxins in its flesh. But as far as we know, no imported Chinese aquaculture products have yet been tested.


Well, now imported Chinese seafood has been tested, and the results are disturbing. FDA tested Chinese catfish from four Arkansas wholesale distributors, and found detectable levels in at least one sample. Having recently passed Vietnam to become the largest exporter of farmed catfish to the US, China is on target to deliver over 20,000 tons in 2007. If contamination was rare, a positive test would be like finding a needle in a haystack, but considering what we now know about the widespread use of melamine-adulterated fish feed in China, a one-in-four chance strikes me as just about right.

USDA and FDA officials continue to insist that melamine-tainted poultry, pork and seafood is safe to eat and that contamination levels pose no risk to human health. But they simply do not know (or will not tell us) how widespread the contamination is, whether melamine accumulates over time in human kidneys or other organs, what other toxins may have been contained in the melamine scrap, and exactly how melamine interacts with cyanuric acid and other contaminants within the human body.

What we do know is that thousands of dogs and cats dropped dead after eating melamine-tainted pet food -- some within only a meal or two of consuming the poisoned product. And the FDA's own Protein Surveillance Assignment warns that chronic exposure to melamine "may cause cancer or reproductive damage," and specifically instructs that "pregnant women should not perform this assignment."

The media may have lost interest in the food safety crisis, but the story continues to unfold, much of it predictably. If farm-raised Chinese seafood is contaminated, it seems likely that so is Chinese poultry, pork and beef. And if multiple Chinese manufacturers were selling melamine-spiked gluten and protein concentrate to US importers as "human food grade," then surely Chinese food manufacturers have been similarly duped as well. Given the facts (and human nature) there is every reason to believe that Chinese manufactured processed foods are sitting on the shelf today with detectable levels of melamine -- and no doubt, have been for years.

And that's just the melamine. From toxic levels of diethylene glycol in children's toothpaste, to antibiotics in fish, to "filthy," "unsafe" and "falsely" labeled products, China's burgeoning yet largely unregulated food industry is reaching out to threaten consumers worldwide.

It was not a lucky guess that led me to suspect Chinese aquaculture products, but an informed one. Don't be surprised when this story gets much worse.
Written by David Goldstein