Each day, government officials worldwide are announcing that more and more Chinese food products contain melamine. The good news is that someone is testing all the products, obvious or not, for melamine contamination. The Voice of America reported that latest products recalled include Koala brand chestnut and chocolate flavored cookies, Nabisco Ritz cracker cheese sandwiches and rice crackers. The lesson here is that nothing is safe. Rice crackers contain milk? Even I wasn’t expecting that. Time to be extra careful.
Tag: food safety
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Beijing Olympics Goodwill Goes Poof
I think all the goodwill generated by the Beijing Olympics has just disappeared.
- China’s Dairy Woes Widen. Wall Street Journal.
- China Milk Scandal Widens as Melamine Found in Yogurt. Bloomberg.
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Tit-for-Tat
Associated Press: China Suspends Some U.S. Meat Imports. China has suspended imports of chicken feet, pig ears and other animal products from seven U.S. companies, including the world’s largest meat processor, in an apparent attempt to turn the tables on American complaints about tainted products from China.
This is great news! You know China is meticulously scrutinizing every shipment of American food products. To their credit, they discovered American meat products contaminated with salmonella, anti-parasite drugs and food additives. This is one instance where when governments play tit-for-tat, the people actually benefit. I hope they continue scrutinizing each other’s food products. It only means safer foods for the rest of us.
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Public or Private?
New York Times: China Finds Poor Quality on Its Store Shelves. China said on Wednesday that nearly a fifth of the food and consumer products that it checked in a nationwide survey this year were found to be substandard or tainted, underscoring the risk faced by its own consumers even as the country’s exports come under greater scrutiny overseas.
No question. China has been getting pounded by the press as of late for all kinds of safety lapses. Unfortunately, we no longer live in an era where environmental, health and safety problems in China are “their” problems. Because we breathe the same air and use the same manufactured products, “their” problem is “our” problem as well.
So far, our government does not have a solution to this crisis and neither does the Chinese government. While the politicians can pontificate and legislate all they want, ultimately this will boil down to an enforcement issue. How can we “trust but verify” that Made in China products are safe?
The answer will probably come from the private sector. Whichever company can step into the void by offering a solution to test the safety of Chinese products can act as a gatekeeper to all of China’s imports—and collect a treasure in tolls along the way. The cost of testing will be paid by Chinese manufacturers who must earn the trust of the world market now that the safety of their products is tainted. So, who will it be?
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Giving Chinese Food a Bad Name
Los Angeles Times: China speaks out on food safety. Clearly annoyed by the bad press China has been getting, officials Thursday also denounced media reports that they said exaggerated the nation’s flaws and overlooked the fact that more than 99% of Chinese food exports to the United States in the last three years had met quality standards.
The problem with government-based or corporate-based logic in such a situation is that is is not consumer-based. Do I want to eat food with a 1% chance of being tainted? No. Do I want to eat food with a 0.1% of being tainted? No. I want my food to be safe and fit for human consumption. Because when our food supply is tainted with bacteria, pollution or unsafe chemical additives, people can get severely ill and die. And, there’s no upside to that.
Besides, food safety is a two-way street. As the U.S. beef industry has witnessed, whenever a case of mad cow disease is found in American livestock, no one wants to import our beef. You can pull out all the statistics you want, but it’s a hard sell.
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Rogue in Vogue
New York Times: An Export Boom Suddenly Facing a Quality Crisis. Hoping to investigate why melamine contaminated so much pet food, investigators from the Food and Drug Administration spent two weeks in China this month. […] After United States investigators left, China issued a statement asking the United States not to punish other exporters of food ingredients for the misdeeds of a few rogue companies, and not to let this become a trade quarrel.
Somehow I am not convinced that only a few “rogue” companies were at fault. Nor was I convinced that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the work of a few “rogue” soldiers. In both situations, the problem was that the culture and the environment permitted, and perhaps encouraged, such misdeeds to occur.
Now, what of this trade quarrel? The danger for all parties involved in the Chinese export trade isn’t a trade quarrel. Trade disputes are problems between nations that inevitably get resolved after protracted negotiations and political posturing. No, the real problem here is that not a quarrel with the U.S. government, but with the U.S. public. How do you resolve a quarrel with consumers who refuse to purchase your products? This is the type of situation that get ugly fast and not just for Chinese exporters.
How will American importers of Chinese products react? Knowing that the products you import are basically unregulated by the Chinese government, what steps must you take to ensure the safety of your own merchandise? Because all the dollars and cents you are saving by importing from China can vanish in a flash when your product sickens or kills someone. Punitive damages anyone?
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China’s Upton Sinclair
Whenever I read any negative news articles about China, I don’t see a society too different from the one we celebrate in America. From a business, legal and political perspective, some analysts may contend that America and China are polar opposites. But, that is not the case. In fact, we are traveling along the same path. The difference is that China is a few steps behind. That’s all.
So, the latest episode involves the use of melamine by Chinese manufacturers in animal feed. That and the occasional mass food poisonings of humans that occur in China but do not garner as much press as when American dogs and cats get ill. Well, we’ll just have to wait for China’s Upton Sinclair to write a Chinese version of The Jungle.