Angry in the Great White North

Guess what? My idiocy has made the local paper! The Guelph Mercury writes a follow-up to the counterfeit Colgate toothpaste story, leading with an example of one of my more questionable blogging decisions:

Steve Janke is wishing he hadn't taste-tested the counterfeit Colgate toothpaste he discovered at a Guelph Everything for a Dollar Store last month.

That's because Health Canada announced Friday the toothpaste contains high levels of dangerous bacteria, and not diethylene glycol or DEG, a chemical used in antifreeze, as previously suspected.

Janke purchased the counterfeit toothpaste after reading about tubes found in the U.S., then checking a Guelph store for products matching the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's warning description.

The idea that the toothpaste might contain an antifreeze component was scary enough, the Cambridge man said yesterday. "But if it's contaminated (with bacteria), then you've got to wonder what the conditions were in the plant that made that stuff."

I have been wondering about the contamination. That tube of counterfeit Colgate toothpaste I found in Guelph, now known to be teeming with the sorts of bacteria that cause major gastrointestinal distress in humans (salmonella, dysentery, and so forth), is sitting in a ziploc bag in front of me as I write.

How does a tube of toothpaste become a petri dish of bugs that could cause to severe bouts of vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain?

No, that's the wrong question. The question is how does this happen to every tube in a shipment of potentially thousands!

This isn't a matter of a few tubes that were dropped and then put back in the production line instead of being destroyed.

The clues are everywhere. US food inspectors who turn back Chinese food shipments write the word "flithy" on the report. That means something:

In the past year, the FDA rejected more than twice as many food shipments from China as from all other countries combined.

Most of the time, the reason listed is simply "filthy," the official term used when inspectors smell decomposition or gross contamination of food.

Gross contamination that can be easily smelled. What can easily be smelled?

Consider this Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, that earned record fines for mixing food with sewage:

An Edinburgh restaurant has been fined an unprecedented £18,000 after mouse droppings were found on dishes.

An environmental health team found "filthy" conditions in the kitchen at The Rainbow Arch earlier this year.

A cellar floor was covered in wet mouldy cardboard and the inspection found "a foul black substance resembling sewage debris".

Edinburgh City Council inspectors also found an area used to cool food was close to a courtyard infested with pigeons and a drain that had overflowed.

A rice steamer was described as "filthy", knives were dirty, and food serving bowls were contaminated with mouse droppings.

Henry Tse pleaded guilty to nine charges at the Morrison Street premises on Friday at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

Consider the major crackdown on food operations in China last week, and the horror stories that came out of that. In this case, pork and sewage:

The Chinese know they have a serious food safety problem. The New York Times reported that 180 food plants were recently shut down by Chinese authorities after finding 23,000 food safety violations.

Chinese hog farmers have been caught forcing filthy waste water into hogs to increase their weight. Chinese authorities shut down several farms where plastic pipes were forced down pigs throats so that farmers could pump up to 40 pounds of wastewater into pigs that were headed for slaughter at one of China's main slaughterhouses.

And again, with seafood and sewage:

China, the leading exporter of seafood to the U.S., is raising most of its fish products in water contaminated with raw sewage and compensating by using dangerous drugs and chemicals, many of which are banned by the Food and Drug Administration.

While less than half of Asia has access to sewage treatment plants, aquaculture – the raising of seafood products – has become big business on the continent, especially in China.

And again, with lard and sewage:

A factory manager in eastern China has been arrested for using grease from swill, sewage, pesticides and recycled industrial oil to make lard for human consumption, the state news media said Monday.

“Some was recycled edible grease, such as oil refined from swill and cooked oil,” it said. “Some was grease rendered from sewage, and some was recycled industrial grease.”

So this toothpaste is thoroughly contaminated with the bacteria associated with untreated sewage. But we don't know where the toothpaste came from. On the other hand, China has a serious problem when it comes to keeping human waste out of the food/pharmaceutical production chain.

This is not enough to conclude that this toothpaste labeled as coming from South Africa was actually made in China. But if it came from China, then this is what I think happened. This counterfeiters used sewage water in order to make the toothpaste itself. The entire run of toothpaste was prepared by starting with a vat filled with human waste water, then mixing in the ingredients that create the paste..

And I tasted it!

People brushing their teeth with this stuff that was being sold in Canadian stores might as well have rinsed their toothbrushes in the toilet bowl.

Before flushing.

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