Alarm Bells Ring Over China Food Imports
The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella.
Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.
In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs in America have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.
CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported Thursday that the tainted Chinese wheat gluten was human grade — meaning nothing but luck kept it out of the food stock destined for human dinner plates (read more).
While the public was focused on the danger to their pets, sources tell CBS News that the FDA had tracked at least one suspect batch of wheat gluten into the human food supply, quietly quarantined some products and notified the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to watch for new patients admitted to hospitals with renal or kidney failure.
"This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit.
Just as with manufactured goods, exports of meat, produce, and processed foods from China have soared in recent years, prompting outcries from foreign farm sectors that are feeling pinched by low Chinese prices.
Worried about losing access to foreign markets and stung by tainted food products scandals at home, China has in recent years tried to improve inspections, with limited success.
The problems the government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.
Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. In a case that galvanized the public's and government's attention, shoddy infant formula with little or no nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.
China's Health Ministry reported almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005, with spoiled food accounting for the largest number, followed by poisonous plants or animals and use of agricultural chemicals.
With China increasingly intertwined in global trade, Chinese exporters are paying a price for unsafe practices. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residues have caused bans in Europe and Japan on Chinese shrimp, honey and other products. Hong Kong blocked imports of turbot last year after inspectors found traces of malachite green, a possibly cancer-causing chemical used to treat fungal infections, in some fish.
One source of the problem is China's fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings which make regulation difficult, experts said.
Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 percent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while safer, better quality food officially stamped as "green" accounts for just 1 percent of the total, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.
In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs in America have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.
CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported Thursday that the tainted Chinese wheat gluten was human grade — meaning nothing but luck kept it out of the food stock destined for human dinner plates (read more).
While the public was focused on the danger to their pets, sources tell CBS News that the FDA had tracked at least one suspect batch of wheat gluten into the human food supply, quietly quarantined some products and notified the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to watch for new patients admitted to hospitals with renal or kidney failure.
"This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade," said Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit.
Just as with manufactured goods, exports of meat, produce, and processed foods from China have soared in recent years, prompting outcries from foreign farm sectors that are feeling pinched by low Chinese prices.
Worried about losing access to foreign markets and stung by tainted food products scandals at home, China has in recent years tried to improve inspections, with limited success.
The problems the government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.
Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. In a case that galvanized the public's and government's attention, shoddy infant formula with little or no nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.
China's Health Ministry reported almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005, with spoiled food accounting for the largest number, followed by poisonous plants or animals and use of agricultural chemicals.
With China increasingly intertwined in global trade, Chinese exporters are paying a price for unsafe practices. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residues have caused bans in Europe and Japan on Chinese shrimp, honey and other products. Hong Kong blocked imports of turbot last year after inspectors found traces of malachite green, a possibly cancer-causing chemical used to treat fungal infections, in some fish.
One source of the problem is China's fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings which make regulation difficult, experts said.
Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 percent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while safer, better quality food officially stamped as "green" accounts for just 1 percent of the total, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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%u201CFDA had tracked at least one suspect batch of wheat gluten into the human food supply, QUIETLY quarantined some products and notified the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to watch for new patients admitted to hospitals with renal or kidney failure."
------------------
Do you wonder why the FDA kept the discovery quiet?
Mega-corporations now own or control almost the entire government, especially the current administration and the FDA.
The pharmaceutical conglomerates, the medical profession, including both doctors and hospitals (which has become a monopoly-controlled and totally profit-oriented industry), all make billions from people getting sick.
Walmart is MAJOR Chinese importer whose success can be attributed mainly to importing products from china at 10% what it would cost them in America and selling the products to Americans for 75% what they would pay for the same products made in America. This also is the reason Walmart has driven most competitors out of business.
We participated because we PERSONALLY saved money...
Posted by jn122736 at 12:34 PM : Apr 13, 2007
===========
We would be FOOLS to think that some of the tained wheat gluten didn't make it into the human food supply...
foreign companies are buying american industries and running them into the ground
Food from CHINA is proceeding into the american food chain with little or no regulation
Our national resources are being GIVEN away to foreign national companies controlled by nations like VENEZUELA with little concern about the future
Bush is a patriot my arse
Bravo! Since the Bush administration has taken power they have slashed the budget for food inspectors in the FDA (who are supposed to inspect both human AND pet food) and staffed it with political appointees, most of them from the very industries they're supposed to inspect. He put the fox's in charge of the hen house and we are da*mn lucky that, as tragic as this story was, it didn't happen to human food first. All pet food sold in the US, by law, must be human grade. It must be safely consumable by humans, but the FDA dropped the ball big time because of lack of proper funding. Want to wait until they make the same mistake with baby food before you recognize the problem here?
If the Clintons and the Bushes have their way, we'd better just sell ourselves into slavery to the Asians right now and save a lot of trouble in the near future.
I don't know who is running the FDA, but whoever they are, they are IDIOTS!
"If God looks after fools & idiots, you're in line for a double-dose of heavenly grace."
You are living proof of this.
Posted by Canaima at 03:05 PM : Apr 13, 2007
Thanks Canaima. It looks like you are living proof of your theory.
It is a well known fact that the FDA is run by former food and drug industry executives and lobyists apointed by Bu$h. It's part of his multibillion dollar campaign, "no corporation left behind". Perhaps you've heard of it? Care to dispute the facts or do you prefer to try to smear the messenger? Thanks for your "two cents" worth. Be sure to collect your money on your way out.
It is a well known fact that the FDA is run by former food and drug industry executives and lobyists apointed by Bu$h.
========
Bush doesn't even need the FDA now, look at the Texes governor, Rick Perry's decision to vaccinate ALL Texas girls with Merck's STD vaccine.
Quote:
Women in
Government, the group that Merck paid to lobby for this mind-boggling order.
The Associated Press reports that one of Merck's three lobbyists in Texas is
Mike Toomey, Perry's former chief of staff. His current chief of staff's
mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state
director for Women in Government.
The governor also received $6,000 from Merck's political action committee
during his re-election campaign.
http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/455/28/