Filth: it’s what’s for dinner
Heard an interesting story on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition this past week. It concerned the latest news about contaminated food imports from China. Probably everyone’s heard at this point about the contaminated pet food that has caused hundreds (or thousands, maybe) of deaths of people’s beloved companion animals, and not that it “started” with that, I’m sure, but since that story broke there seems to be a lot of scrutiny on what goes on over there with the food we’re importing from them.
As Imports Increase, a Tense Dependence on China
by Richard Knox, Morning Edition, May 25, 2007
Toothpaste from China is the latest official worry. This week, the Food and Drug Administration began testing it at U.S. ports of entry after contaminated Chinese toothpaste began showing up in other countries. It contained a chemical used in antifreeze — the same chemical that killed people in Panama last year when it turned up in cough syrup, mislabeled by Chinese manufacturers as a harmless sweetener. An FDA spokesman says no test results are available yet on the toothpaste at U.S. ports.
(Full article is here.)
The parts that really interested me were:
In the past year, the FDA rejected more than twice as many food shipments from China as from all other countries combined. The rejected shipments make an unappetizing list. Inspectors commonly block Chinese food imports because they’re “filthy.” That’s the official term. “They might smell decomposition. They might see gross contamination of the food. ‘Filthy’ is a broad term for a product that is not fit for human consumption,” Hubbard [former FDA official William Hubbard] says.
And
Another rejection code is “vet-drug-res.” That means the food product, usually things like fish, seafood and eels, contains residues of veterinary drugs, such as antibiotics and antifungals. “These fish are often raised in polluted water, unfortunately. So they’re given these drugs to treat them,” Hubbard says.
And most of all, incredibly, this:
When Hubbard was at the FDA, he heard all kinds of stories about foreign food processors, like the one a staffer told him after visiting a Chinese factory that makes herbal tea.
“To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out,” Hubbard says. “And the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves.” (Emphasis mine.)
They’re driving trucks over tea leaves to dry them faster, but that’s not the problem. Driving trucks over food–ON TOP OF–food, spewing exhaust all over it, dropping bits of whatever crap has attached itself to the undercarriage, leaving little pieces of whatever roadkill the tires have picked up to decompose in the food, on the food, is not the bad part. That would be okay, I guess. What’s a little rust and road dirt, after all? And can anyone prove that eating carbon monoxide emissions is actually harmful to you? Who cares if your food is impregnated with it? It’s Extreme Eating! (That’s a great idea for a new reality show actually: ten lucky [hapless?] bastards are picked to go to China and eat whatever the processing plant puts in front of them. First prize is a year’s worth of food imported direct from the factory floor to your table; second prize is two years’ worth.) No, what’s “bad” about this innovative method of drying tea leaves is that the exhaust fumes contain lead. Well call me prissy but to me that’s not what’s going to make my face screw up into a combination of puzzled/bewildered/completely grossed out mask of what.the.fuck. They are DRIVING trucks over food that people eat! And this is perceived to be “okay”! I am not so naïve to think that we in the U.S. have some kind of pristine system whereby our food is delivered on angels’ wings, never to alight on the dirt of manufacturing reality, but I don’t think we’d get away with using a Mack truck’s muffler output as a food dehydrator. And yet we (or rather the government) thinks it’s okay to import it. My mind is blown. It really is. This is what makes me want to go live on a farm, turn the clock back to 1840, hook up Bessie the Mule to my plow, and never visit a Stop & Shop again. I just need to buy me some bloomers first. It’s either that or just close my eyes and think of England. I can’t get away with not eating, I suppose. Why did I have to hear that story? Why? I was living in ignorant bliss. Well not exactly ignorant, since I am aware of the level of “filth” the FDA allows in a variety of foods. Did you know that there can be up to a certain number of rat hairs per pound of chocolate without it being considered tainted enough to warrant destruction? Or that … oh never mind, I’ll leave you to your pristine white-tiled gleaming stainless-steel processing-plant fantasies.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:45 pm
That story about the Chinese herbal tea bags is outrageous! I can’t believe it!
You make a lot of interesting points about all the “filth” the FDA allows brought into this country, but much of this should not surprise you, given what the FDA allows sold in our own country. For example, the FDA has advised all women of child-bearing age and young children to avoid fish with high levels of mercury, such as tilefish, king mackerel, shark, and swordfish; yet the government does nothing to enforce this! In addition, the FDA has so ineffectively publicized their advice that many consumers are unaware of the potential problems associated with mercury poisoning. Even those that are aware of the dangers do not know which fish are safe to eat and which are not. The best way to resolve this issue would be for grocery stores to post signs with the FDA’s advice where the consumers need them: at their seafood counters. That way, customers could make informed decisions to protect their own health, even if the government will not take action. (I must add, however, that California and Westchester County of New York have taken the commendable action of requiring their stores to post the information. If only the other states/counties would as well!)
June 1st, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Prissy, you most certainly are not my darling Meow House. The more I hear about the imported foods we get from China the less I want to eat. China’s really grasped the whole notion of Capitalism haven’t they? And the fact that there’s not enough inspectors to go through all this crap they are importing is also alarming; in the NPR article, it mentions only 1% of food ingredients are being checked, with only 1/2 of those getting tested. But of course, there’s no money to hire more inspectors when we’ve got a war against terror to fund. My guess is that it’s going to take a major food fuck up, in which people will die due to this filthy food getting through, before things change. That’s a damned shame since it could be prevented.
And, for the record, I’m sure you’d look lovely in bloomers.