An article appeared on the Internation Herald Tribune that seems to have disappeared. It is not clear why. It might be a technical problem or a problem with the content. The content is quite frightening. It outlines the widespread use of melamine in low grade agricultural products as a means of fooling tests and appearing as high quality (and high priced) material.
The quotes come from a blog that appears to have a complete copy of the article.
Update: With a hat tip to Halls of Macadamia, here is the article from the New York Times.
Essentially, if these products were used in your food, you've been eating coal:
Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create plastics and fertilizer.
But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially enhance the protein level.
The melamine powder has been dubbed “fake protein” and is used to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that provides higher nutrition value.
“It just saves money,” says a manager at an animal feed factory here. “Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level.”
A local problem that only started recently from the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group? We're not so lucky:
The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
Here's my idea. Let the practice continue to be widespread in China. But not anywhere else. Let's get our food elsewhere. I'm not suggesting that the food trading system end. Canada depends on agricultural exports. But China seems to be a special case. Consider these horror stories:
The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country’s dubious food safety record and history of excessive antibiotic and pesticide use.
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.
Human hair? You can use your favourite search engine to get the whole story, but let me summarize the disgusting details. Soy sauce's unique taste comes from a non-essential amino acid that is fermented out of the soy beans. That amino acid is also found in human hair. So use some powerful chemicals to extra that amino acid from the stuff gathered up from local barber shops, mix with water, alcohol, salt, and caramel colouring, and you've got ersatz soy sauce.
But hey, amino acid is amino acid, right? I suppose thats's true, but the problem is that the chemicals used to break down the hair are carcinogens. That's why you make soy sauce from soy beans.
Imagine a similar story for the bayby formula.
So what do we do? Do we increase the inspections of Chinese food products? Who pays for that? Pass the cost to the consumer? Hardly seems fair, but then the increase cost will reduce the demand for Chinese sourced material. I'd bet the Chinese will just learn new ways to cheat to compensate for the costs. We could send the bill for the inspections to the Chinese government. But those bills would never be payed.
Or we could just shut the doors. Let them eat coal and hair and whatever else they care to boil and slap on some noodles.
Did I mention we ought not to eat the noodles either? Yeah, contaminated with lead and industrial bleach, and exported to your store shelves:
In 2004, testing by Chinese authorities determined that some brands of cellophane noodles produced in Yantai, Shandong were contaminated with lead. It emerged that several unscrupulous companies were making their noodles from cornstarch instead of mung beans in order to save costs, and, to make the cornstarch transparent, were adding lead-based whiteners to their noodles. In December 2006, Beijing authorities again inspected cellophane noodles produced by the Yantai Deshengda Longkou Vermicelli Co. Ltd. in Siduitou village, Zhangxing town, Zhaoyuan city, Yantai, this time determining that sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate, a toxic and possibly carcinogenic industrial bleach which is an illegal food additive in China, had been used in the production of the noodles. The company, which formerly sold its noodles both in China as well as overseas, was ordered to cease production and distribution. The company's website has since been shut down.
The website is gone, but you can still find the product in old online catalogues. Get a load of the description:
Our products are highly competive, which is a result of unique technique and good management.
The lead noodles came from Shandong province. The company that sold the melamine-spiked rice protein is in Shandong.
Just in case you were thinking that things might get better once the Chinese government moves in and cleans things up. It didn't work the last time. Why would anyone think it'll be any different this time around?
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