Comments From a US produce broker ;

Regarding the recent Chinese fresh ginger recall, and other products.

(US produce broker)I spent about 10 years of my career in the garlic and ginger businesses, with product from China playing a greater role as each year rolled on.  It became clear that travel to China was appropriate, so I made the trips and learned much about the production and processing of both garlic and ginger.  I offer the following observations:

While shippers in China routinely tout their growing operations as large-scale farms, the majority of export product is produced on small, uninspected, independent family plots.  Farm implements consist of livestock, small, 1940's era single cylinder diesel-powered walk-behind machines, and, of course, human hands and backs.

 

I visited numerous packing sheds, and observed on many occasions women in their 70's crouching on the dirt floor, sometimes with sneezing children on their laps, grading, sizing, and hand trimming garlic or ginger using a small knife with a curved blade.  I saw many fingers bandaged with what appeared to be masking tape, frequently stained red from a bloody wound.

Many garlic packing sheds inventoried numerous pallets of empty cartons.  Some of these cartons were labeled "Product of Uzbekistan" or "Product of Thailand".  These cartons are intended for export to the USA. Mislabeling the product is done in an effort to circumvent the US Dept. of Commerce anti-dumping duty assessed on garlic produced in China.

When I asked through my interpreter if a shipper could provide organically produced product, the packinghouse manager went to his desk to retrieve a rubber stamp.  The stamp simply said "ORGANIC". I was quoted the same price for "organic" garlic as for the conventional product.

At a peeled garlic processing facility (actually an open-air, fly-infested shed adjacent to a malodorous drainage ditch), I observed workers dumping peeled garlic cloves into a large tub filled with a cloudy, viscous liquid. Upon inquiry about this step in processing, I was told that the tub was filled with a sulfite(The substance may be toxic to kidneys, liver.

Repeated or prolonged exposure to the substance can produce target organs damage. Repeated exposure to this

highly toxic material may produce general deterioration of health by an accumulation in one or many humans) solution, which ensures that the cloves retain a bright white hue in shipping and handling. The packaging for this product was for the Japanese market, arguably the world's most demanding market.

Wheat and other grain crops are cut by hand and sickle.  Separating the grain from the chaff is accomplished by laying the stalks on the nearest road, where the passing truck tires pass over the stalks at high speed, with the vehicle's wind leaving only the grain on the road surface.  I observed this all over Shandong Province, with many laborers standing on the roadside with big 100-lb burlap sacks labeled "Cargill". Once a suitable pause in traffic occurred, the laborers used handmade straw brooms to whisk the grain from the pavement into the sacks. Did Cargill's office in China authorize this?

These observations, along with many others, have led me to the conclusion that food safety is only a pleasant thought in the parts of Shandong Province I visited.  Claims that US marketers of Chinese produce can control, or even monitor, production are laughable.

China is not a place where you can rent a car at the airport and drive out to the field to check up on a grower. China is not a place where a US company can open an office and take charge of anything.  China is an unregulated place where the shippers understand capitalism very well and will tell buyers exactly what they want to hear. Remember, outsiders don't control anything in China — only the Chinese do. 

Perhaps, someday, China might be able to ship acceptably safe product ,produced to Western standards.  But not yet, not in 50 years.