China is one of the United States's biggest food suppliers. In 2008, China became the third largest source for agricultural and seafood imports, with an increase in imports from around $1 billion in 1997 to almost $5 billion in 2007. During this period the United States imported increasing volumes of mainly seafood, wine and beer, fruit juices, coffee, snack foods and live animals. Some agricultural imports from China are used for pet food and animal feed rather than human consumption. http://www.ehow.com/about_5376394_major-food-products-china.html
A wave of tainted-food scares has renewed fears in China over continued product-safety problems despite a government promise to clean up the food industry following a deadly 2008 milk scandal. Tainted pork, toxic milk, dyed buns and other dodgy foods have surfaced in recent weeks, sickening consumers and highlighting the government's apparent inability to oversee China's huge and under-regulated food industry. The litany of stomach-turning headlines has caused officials to scramble to contain the damage and sparked an anguished lament last week from Premier Wen Jiabao about unscrupulous food producers. "These virulent food-safety incidents have revealed a grave situation of dishonesty and moral degradation," Wen Jiabao said in a speech to government officials. "Without high-quality citizens or ethical strength, China cannot be a respectable economy or power in a real sense," he said in published remarks. Recent scandals have included pork found on the market so loaded with bacteria that it glowed in the dark, according to a state press report. Authorities have discovered bean sprouts laced with cancer-causing nitrates, steamed buns with banned chemical preservatives, and rice laced with heavy metals, to name just a few. China pledged to clean up the food industry after milk products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine -- added to give the appearance of high protein content -- killed at least six babies and sickened 300,000 others in 2008. With food safety regularly ranked as a top public concern, China also passed a 2009 Food Safety Law amid much fanfare. But the recent scandals prompted the health ministry on Monday to launch a crackdown on 151 banned food additives, while the central government vowed to issue new food safety rules this year -- an apparent admission that the Food Safety Law and other measures had failed. "The causes of food safety problems in China are many," Bao Chengsheng, a professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law told AFP. "One aspect is that China's legal system is incomplete. A lot of regulations are unclear... causing legal loopholes." He added that underfunded regulators struggle to keep tabs on China's countless small food producers and retailers, setting the stage for lax oversight and corruption. For example, "pig brokers" often bribe food safety inspectors to turn a blind eye to tainted meat, the state-controlled Global Times said. Such practices have fueled a market for the carcasses of pigs that have died from disease and whose meat should be destroyed but instead finds its way into the food chain, the paper said. Tainted meat from the carcasses of between 20 to 30 million diseased pigs enters Chinese markets each year, it said, citing experts. Culpable officials typically receive slap-on-the-wrist administrative penalties," it quoted Sang Liwei, a lawyer who helped draft the Food Safety Law, as saying. "That is not enough. Their criminal liabilities should be investigated too," he said. Ninety-one villagers in central China's Hunan province were hospitalised last weekend with food poisoning after eating pork believed to have been tainted with clenbuterol, an additive that makes meat leaner, reports said. A total of 286 villagers had to seek treatment. Despite declaring that all melamine-laced dairy products had been confiscated or destroyed, they have repeatedly surfaced on the market. In the latest discovery, authorities in Chongqing city in China's southwest confiscated 26 tonnes of melamine-tainted milk powder, the Global Times said. The scandals have left beleaguered consumers not knowing whom to trust, Beijing office worker Zhang Lihua said. "If the police don't crack down on profit-driven businessmen who have lost their morality, they will become even bolder and produce even more poisonous food," she told AFP. "It has become so bad that no one knows what foods are safe and which ones are poisonous." http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/...chems-among-chinas-latest-poison-foods/print/
Ink, dye, bleach, wax and toxic chemicals: These are just a few of the substances that have been found recently in food products in China, reigniting fears over food safety despite repeated government pledges to crack down on tainted eats. Why is China having such trouble making its food safe? While China is no stranger to food scandals, a spate of food contamination cases brought to light over the past month has been shocking even to the most jaded of observers here. Over the past few days, health authorities in the southern province of Guangdong shut down 17 noodle makers after they were discovered mixing ink and wax to their dough. Meanwhile, over the weekend, nearly 300 people in the city of Changsha were reportedly sickened after eating meat contaminated with the banned “skinny meat” additive clenbuterol, the subject of a meat industry crackdown in March. In perhaps the most bizarre case, also in Changsha, a number of consumers earlier this month walked into their kitchens at night to discover their store-bought pork was glowing in the dark. Beijing has struggled with food safety for years. The problem appeared to come to a head in 2008, when milk tainted with the industrial chemical melamine killed at least six children, sickened tens of thousands of others in 2008 and appeared to shock the government into taking decisive action. But the melamine eventually reappeared in the Chinese food supply, along with a host of other chemicals and illegal additives, leading many observers to wonder why China can’t seem to solve such a fundamental problem. One of the biggest issues is the drive to make a buck at any cost, says Lester Ross, a Beijing-based attorney with U.S. law firm WilmerHale. Some companies see that by using additives, they can cut overhead costs or boost profit margins, and they merely aren’t thinking about the affects the additives will have on consumers, Mr. Ross says. The answer to that, according to Mr. Ross, is an education blitz. China has the ability to plaster its subways, bus stations and even television screens with messages and advertising that lets all people know the dangers involved using chemical additives in food. Local media reports of illnesses related to chemical consumption have helped, Mr. Ross says. A flood of news stories in recent days have informed Chinese consumers that meat containing clenbuterol may be leaner, but it may also cause headaches, nausea, and heart palpitations, while vegetables with sodium nitrite may grow faster, but they can also cause cancer. In a push for greater clarity, China’s Ministry of Health is planning to revise and make public its list of legal food additives by the end of the year, while also publishing a black list of illegal additives, the state run China Daily reports. But education is only part of the problem. Another issue, according to Mr. Ross, is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen — or rather too many bureaucracies handling food safety. The Ministry of Health is the lead agency on food safety issues, he explains, but the State Administration for Industry and Commerce is also involved, as are the State Food and Drug Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture. Struggles with food safety are not a specifically Chinese problem. Many countries, including the U.S. and Japan, have gone through similar growing pains in the food industry, says Wu Ming, a professor at Beijing University’s school of public health. Sanitation and contamination issues permeated the food manufacturing and processing U.S. in the late-19th century. As China law scholar Stanley Lubman recently noted, it wasn’t until 1906, when Upton Sinclair published “The Jungle,” a book that unveiled the horrific standards of meat-packing plants of Chicago, that the U.S. began to wake up to its food safety problems. The big difference between the U.S. and China is size, Ms. Ming says, adding that the quantity of companies involved in China’s food industry will make for tougher regulatory obstacles. “It’s impossible to lessen such problems overnight,” Mrs. Ming said. “It will take many years.” http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/04/25/why-china-struggles-with-food-safety/
