Imported food

China: Top Five Most Dangerous Imported Foods

Added by Kimberly Ruble on November 27, 2013.

The top five most dangerous foods imported from China are among the numerous scandals over Chinese products. China has long permitted toxic food items along with other hazardous exports to leave its borders. The majority of the American media and the United States government do not seem to have made quite enough effort to notify the general public about food from China which could be dangerous. The FDA inspectors only look at about 2.5 percent of the food that is imported. So that means it really is left to the consumers to protect his or her own health by making informed choices over what to place on the dinner table.

Below is a list of five food items from China that Americans need to be wary of.

Tilapia: Tilapia is one of the most popular kinds of fish at the moment. Most of it is imported from China. It is well-known in China fish farmers use high levels of hormones in fish cultivation. The farmers also use growth hormones and very strong antibiotics in order to keep the fish alive in what are often dirty, overcrowded conditions.

Cod: Over 50 percent of the cod that is out on the U.S. market comes from China. What is true for tilapia is the very same for cod farming.

Apple Juice: If anyone is purchasing apple juice that is a bargain brand, it is probably a product of China. That means it has come a long distance. Around 50 percent of all apple juice sold in America comes from China. Pesticide residues which stay on fruits, vegetables and processed foods as they come into the food supply have been a problem for a long time. China is the world’s prime pesticide manufacturer and has largely refused to do anything about dangerous or illegal chemicals left on food.

Processed Mushrooms: Almost 35 percent of all processed mushrooms come from China. The reasoning is basically the same as with apple juice.

Garlic: Garlic is in numerous types of food. Over 30 percent of garlic comes from China. The label may read that it is grown as an organic product but there is no one checking and making sure to certify any products as truly organic that come from China.

There is also the pollution problem in China. As much as 70 percent of the rivers and lakes in China are polluted from industrial facilities such as textile and chemical plants. It was just recently that citizens in the city of Zhejiang, which is one of the less polluted in China, offered 300,000 Yuan, which is$50,000 in American money, if any government officials would attempt to swim in the local water channel. No one took them up on the offer.

The United States embassy located in Beijing now releases air pollution reports every hour. This is so any American citizens living in that city can look at the information and decide if they are going to go outside at that time or not.

With this kind of appalling pollution of soil, water and air, it is basically impossible to have any kind of safe food, not just the top five foods that are considered most dangerous.

Source: http://guardianlv.com/2013/11/china-...mported-foods/

China’s Food Deal Extends Its Reach, Already Mighty

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: May 29, 2013

If you dined on tilapia recently, chances are it came from China. And that artificial vanilla you just used to make cookies? It, too, may have made the same long journey to your kitchen in the United States.

A growing amount of food commonly consumed by Americans — ranging from canned tuna and mandarin oranges to fresh mushrooms and apple juice — is now being imported from China. By the end of last year, the United States imported 4.1 billion pounds of food products from China, according to the Agriculture Department.

American imports of Chinese food products gained more attention on Wednesday, when Smithfield Foods, one of the biggest and oldest pork producers in the United States, agreed to sell itself to Shuanghui International, one of China’s largest meat processors.

The $4.7 billion deal amounts to the largest takeover to date of an American company by a Chinese one. Although Smithfield emphasized that the deal was intended to deliver more pork to China, not the reverse, it nonetheless prompted concern about China’s expanding role in the American food supply and the implications that might have for food safety in the United States.

“We are importing more and more food from China at the same time we are hearing more and more about food scandals involving Chinese companies,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch who testified in Congress at a hearing on Chinese food imports. Food safety problems, like melamine deliberately put into pet foods and baby formula as well as unsafe levels of cadmium in rice, have plagued China. The latest episode involved fox, rat and mink meat that was doctored with gelatin, pigment and nitrates and sold as mutton.

“We should definitely give the Chinese an award for creativity in adulterating foods,” said Jeff Nelken, a food safety expert. “They are a great resource for counterfeited foods, like honey products that don’t seem to have any pollen in them.”

A 2009 study by the Agriculture Department concluded that while Chinese officials were working to improve food safety and the regulation of food production — requiring the small number of food exporters there to gain certification — imports from China were still problematic. “Monitoring the wide range of products and hazards that can arise at various points in the export chain is a challenge for Chinese and U.S. officials,” the report stated.

The United States government has continued to have concerns about Chinese food exports, with a Congressional hearing this month that was billed as “The Threat of China’s Unsafe Consumables” as the latest example. “The health and safety, not only of the United States and Europe but that of people around the world, has come to be dependent on the quality of goods imported from China,” Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who heads the House Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, said in opening the hearing. “Yet the task of inspecting and testing Chinese goods is beyond the ability of governments, considering the magnitude of that challenge.”

Imported foods sold in groceries and other food stores must be labeled with their country of origin, but a substantial portion of imports end up in restaurant and food service meals, where consumers have no idea of their source.

Additionally, once imported foods are processed in any way, such labeling is no longer required under government regulations.

Thus, frozen imported peas and carrots would require a label if packaged separately, but mixed together and sold in a single package, they do not need labeling, Ms. Lovera said. Fish fillets must carry labeling, but imported fish sticks or crab patties do not.

Many of the scandals over Chinese food stuffs imported to the United States have involved products that fall under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for monitoring seafoods and fruits and vegetables coming into the country.

Americans have long been eating foods imported from China, the world’s largest agricultural economy and one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products. China shipped 4.1 billion pounds of food to the United States last year, according to the Agriculture Department, including almost half of the apple juice, 80 percent of the tilapia and more than 10 percent of the frozen spinach eaten.

China is also a big source of ingredients used in food, like xylitol, a candy sweetener; artificial vanilla, soy sauce and folic acid.

China is not, however, allowed to export fresh pork or beef to the United States because it still has outbreaks of hoof and mouth disease.

The Smithfield announcement reminded many people of video footage this spring that showed thousands of pig carcasses floating down a river that supplies drinking water to Shanghai. The source of the floating pigs remains a mystery, but they were hailed as a sign that a Chinese government crackdown on people selling dead and diseased pigs for pork was working.

In 2011, Shuanghui itself got caught up in that enforcement effort, after Chinese officials found it selling pork laced with clenbuterol, a veterinary medicine banned for use in animals intended for human consumption.

Smithfield and Shuanghui on Wednesday emphasized that the deal aimed to increase the supply of high quality, safe pork to China.

James Roth, director of the Center for Food Security and Public Health at Iowa State University, said he had no concerns about food safety arising out of the deal because any pork processed in the United States would have to go through the Agriculture Department’s inspection systems. “They’re doing this to enhance exports to China because they need safe meat for their population, not to bring Chinese pork to the United States,” Professor Roth said.

Processed pork products like smoked hams, sausages and bacon could conceivably be imported from China, but only if they met standards set by the World Organization for Animal Health, which require cooking at high heats for a specific amount of time, he said.

China has been pressing for permission to export poultry, which does not contract hoof and mouth disease, to the United States for some time,

Neal Keppy, a farmer in Iowa who raises hogs from about three weeks of age until they are slaughtered, said he was confident that Smithfield under Chinese ownership would continue to produce high quality, safe pork products.

“What I think is more concerning is if China owns Smithfield, who knows if that pork will stay in this country if the food supply gets tight?” Mr. Keppy said. “In that case, a lot of pork will head for China instead of feeding U.S. mouths.”

He said he hoped regulators would keep that in mind as they reviewed the deal.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/bu...anted=all&_r=0

Chicken Processed in China Triggers U.S. Food Safety Protests

By Brian Wingfield and Shruti Date Singh Sep 26, 2013 9:46 PM ET

Food-safety advocates are raising alarms over a decision by the Obama administration to permit chicken processed in China to be sold in the U.S. even after several high-profile incidents of food contamination.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in addressing a decade-long trade dispute over farm imports, said it will allow poultry slaughtered in the U.S. and Canada to be processed in China and returned to the U.S. for consumption. Critics are vowing to fight the decision, which they say puts consumers at risk due to lax Chinese factory oversight.

“The Chinese food-safety system has had significant failures in the enforcement of its food-safety laws and regulations,” Senator Charles Schumer wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The issue is the latest flashpoint for U.S. concerns over the safety of goods from China, which since 2007 have included tainted baby formula and evidence of the chemical melamine in pet food and eggs. China in recent months has had an outbreak of avian influenza in its chicken flocks and in March, Shanghai authorities retrieved more than 11,000 dead pigs floating in a river.

“Consumers should know that any processed poultry from China will be produced under equivalent food safety standards and conditions as U.S. poultry,” the Agriculture Department said in a fact sheet.

No Fear

Poultry producers say almost all the chicken eaten in the U.S. will still be produced and processed domestically. The U.S. government currently allows Canada, Chile, France and Israel to export processed poultry to the U.S.

“Ninety-nine percent of the chicken we consume here is hatched, raised and processed in the U.S.,” Tom Super, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council, a Washington-based industry group, said in an e-mail. “We don’t expect that to change any time soon.”

Officials from the Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t respond to e-mail or phone requests for comment.

The U.S. last year exported $354.1 million worth of poultry products to China, representing about 7 percent of total U.S. poultry exports, according to Census Bureau data. The U.S. doesn’t currently import poultry from China.

“There’s a concern that this might be the first step to that,” Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, said by phone.

Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), the largest U.S. meat processor, chicken producer Sanderson Farms Inc. (SAFM), and McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), the world’s largest restaurant chain, are among companies that don’t plan to import processed chicken from China, according to company officials.

Stronger Safeguards

That hasn’t stopped Democrats in Congress, including Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, from seeking assurances from the USDA that food supplies will be safe. New York’s Schumer has asked for additional audits of Chinese plants and more inspections of U.S. meat imports.

There is precedent for an accord for China to process U.S. food items. The U.S. currently allows shrimp to be sent to China for processing, including breading, Theresa Eisenman, a Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

The U.S. last year imported $1.9 billion worth of seafood from China -- far more than any other food product, according to Census Bureau data. Shrimp and prawns accounted for almost $70 million worth of the goods.

Labor Intensive

“There will probably be some company that can see some niche market” for chicken shipments from China to the U.S., Toby Moore, a spokesman for the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council based in Stone Mountain, Georgia, said in a phone interview.

Processing chicken is a labor-intensive endeavor that can’t be done solely by machines and the “lower cost in China is the advantage,” Chris Hurt, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, said in a telephone interview. Those savings in labor costs can counterbalance the higher price tag to ship the end product, Hurt said.

Food-safety advocates have been watching China closely this year as the U.S. government reviewed the purchase of Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD), the world’s largest hog and pork producer, by Hong Kong-based Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd.

“China does not have a food-safety system that allows for any level of top-down management like we have in the United States,” Patricia Buck, director of outreach and education for the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention in Raleigh, North Carolina, a non-profit food-safety advocate, said by phone.

Awaiting Identification

The next step is for China to identify companies that will process imported poultry, Stacy Kish, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said by phone. Processed chicken from China must be labeled as a product of the Asian nation, according to the agency.

Food-safety advocates say that while poultry processed in China would have to be labeled, chicken that’s repackaged into chicken nuggets or wings and served in restaurants wouldn’t necessarily carry the designation.

Consumer Rights

“Even though we’re going to be shipping our poultry to China, there’s no guarantee that that’s what we’re going to be getting back,” Tony Corbo, a lobbyist with Washington-based Food & Water Watch, said in a phone interview. “There are all sorts of consumer right-to-know issues going on here.”

Kish, with the Agriculture Department, said “We do not believe the product would be repackaged in the United States.” If it were, it would have to be done so by Agriculture Department inspectors and labeled as a product of the U.S., she said in an e-mail.

In 2004 China asked the Agriculture Department to audit its processing plants so that poultry could be exported, according to the agency. The U.S. Congress in 2009 lifted a ban on Chinese-processed poultry, and after a final audit of China’s plants in March, the U.S. agency in August agreed that China’s facilities were equivalent to those in the U.S.

Under the terms of the agreement, chicken sent to China for processing must be raised and slaughtered in either the U.S. or Canada, and all poultry must be fully cooked at least 165.2 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) before being sent back to the U.S. to be eaten. USDA inspections will occur at U.S. borders, and agency auditors will review China’s poultry processing system each year.

Plant Inspections

The quality of those inspections may be subject to questioning, since the administration of President Barack Obama has yet to fully enact the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, aimed at being the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. food safety in 70 years. The administration this year proposed the first major regulations for domestic and imported food, which Congress called for after poisonings related to cookie dough, spinach, jalapenos and other foods killed at least nine people and sickened more than 700 in 2008 and 2009.

Food safety in China probably won’t get better until consumers can freely speak out against or sue the government and corporations without fear of retribution, according to Bill Marler, a Seattle-based attorney and publisher of the trade newsletter Food Safety News.

“Until we have a real sea-change in the rule of law in China, I’d be suspect about importing food from China,” he said in a phone interview.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...-protests.html

There may be issues with imported foods, but domestic food safety is a can of worms as well.
Big government testing to ensure food safety presents issues for small businesses and farmers, many who cannot satisfy the requirements presented to them. So boutique cheese industries, dairy, small producers all must struggle with the multitude of regulation designed for safety.

Big government is a two edged sword. Wholesome safe food is something that is easy to agree with and on its face, not an issue of freedom, but the restrictions that squeeze out small businesses present an issue of how much government should do to assure safety.

Originally Posted by Lucille

There may be issues with imported foods, but domestic food safety is a can of worms as well.
Big government testing to ensure food safety presents issues for small businesses and farmers, many who cannot satisfy the requirements presented to them. So boutique cheese industries, dairy, small producers all must struggle with the multitude of regulation designed for safety.

Big government is a two edged sword. Wholesome safe food is something that is easy to agree with and on its face, not an issue of freedom, but the restrictions that squeeze out small businesses present an issue of how much government should do to assure safety.

I agree with the two-edged sword statement. What I find more than a little troubling which goes to your first paragraph is that many of those regulations are targeted towards small producers exempting big AG. In some cases sponsored by Big Ag to stifle the small producers.

I personally think small producers and local business are more accountable to those that are purchasing from them. They don't need the over regulation that stifles them and their customers choices.

Moving towards being more depended on imports for food, like energy, is not a great idea.

The only reason why any business would move or outsource any product is because of a benefit. Less regulation and less cost.

If the end product is still ending up on your dinner table. Seems to me I would want them local or at least in this country.

Why stifle this countries producers for "safety" to supposedly protect the population when you allow the market to be exported and then re-imported to your dinner table with less regulation?

Seems safety is really the issue but control of the market place for benefit of some. Just like many regulations, other laws and taxes in this country.

I really think is just about freedom. We are regulated to death in almost every aspect of our life. There is a law and regulation for just about everything.

It's like the whole country is living in a HOA on steroids. Some people like them. They like the control of the world around them. But it is getting to point with laws and regulations that it's like a overzealous unbearable HOA.

Instead of HOA simply stating you must cut your grass to a certain length you now must now cut it at 2:00 on Saturday every week or else.

I would never live in one. I just don't like the control even if I already did everything that the HOA would require and would personally like my neighbors to do the same. I just don't like the control issue of it and the demand that I must do "things". Any "things".

Anyway, my vote is for less regulation and keep your food coming from a source near you. If a farmer screws up you should be able to hold them accountable for what they do not keep them from doing business. No farmer in their right mind is going to do anything to purposely poison their customers.

It is far easier for large corporations and/or foreign producers to cut corners, marginalize litigation into costs and separate themselves from their customers.

I would think if China can't get their supplements and proteins coming in the country without heavy metals and have the ability to still sell them when we have regulations that prohibit the levels they contain, I don't think we should assume the chicken or any other food product will be any different.

I drink a lot of tea.
The tea from China has lead contamination in the leaves, although it stays in the leaf so you would have to eat the leaf to absorb it.
My wife and I have been buying Japanese teas as a result; they have no lead in the leaves and the brand we get is also tested for pesticide residues.

Originally Posted by Dennis Hultman

I agree with the two-edged sword statement. What I find more than a little troubling which goes to your first paragraph is that many of those regulations are targeted towards small producers exempting big AG. In some cases sponsored by Big Ag to stifle the small producers.

Exactly. That means that small startups wanting to produce wholesome products may have to jump through so many hoops that ultimately they give up, which is what Big Ag wants.
My older son has become somewhat of a cheese connoisseur, and had actually considered apprenticing himself and eventually becoming a boutique cheese producer.
I think that after researching what such a startup venture would entail, he is having second thoughts.

What to me is sad is that such small startups are not really going to affect huge producers, so that even though the regulations prevent budding young companies from getting started, they aren't really competition.
There is a solid market for inexpensive, pre wrapped slices of plastic wrapped processed American cheese that would not be affected by small producers who want to sell hand produced aged gourmet cheese.