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Brazil bans Chinese food products 10/08/2008 | 02:56 AM BRASILIA, Brazil - Brazil says it is indefinitely banning all Chinese food imports due to safety concerns. Brazil's food safety officials say Tuesday they are acting in light of the four Chinese children killed and 54,000 sickened by contaminated milk products. The milk crisis is China has led nations around the globe to ban or recall Chinese products. The ban will have little effect on the food supply in Brazil, which imported just US$120 million in food products from China last year.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is urging consumers to thoroughly cook frozen chicken dinners after 32 people in 12 states were sickened with salmonella poisoning. The health warning by the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited frozen dishes in which the chicken is raw, but breaded or pre-browned, giving the appearance of being cooked. They include "chicken cordon bleu," "chicken Kiev," or chicken breasts stuffed with cheese, vegetables or other items.

Melamine Found in Chocolate Products From China South Korea's food watchdog has detected quantities of melamine, an industrial chemical, in chocolate products from foodstuff giants Nestle SA, Mars Inc. and South Korea's Lotte that were manufactured in China, Yonhap News reported Saturday. The Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) said 2.38 parts per million (ppm) and 1.78 ppm of the toxic substance was discovered in samples of M&M's Milk and Peanut Snickers Fun Size products, respectively, from Mars Korea. A Kit Kat bar from Nestle Korea was also found to contain 2.89 ppm of melamine, the agency said. The...

/begin my translation A Puppy in Nanning Got Dozens of Kidney Stones: Contaminated Powered Milk Suspected Ms. Chen, a resident in Nanning, Guangxi Province, has a puppy with repeated serious illness, because, in less than a year, it underwent one surgery after another, taking out kidney stones three times. They numbered a few dozens in total, with varying size. On Sept. 26, this reporter personally saw the kidney stones taken out from the puppy ten days ago. "They are big stones," said Dr. Lian, the vetenarian, while staring at them. At present, Ms. Chen has stopped giving the puppy the...

CHINA'S toxic milk scandal escalated today as one of the nation's famous candy brands was pulled off shelves and four more people outside the mainland were thought to have fallen ill. The industrial chemical melamine has also been found in Heinz baby cereal and in potato crackers in the southern Chinese territory of Hong Kong and officials ordered a recall of the products. In China, the maker of White Rabbit candy, given to US president Richard Nixon on a landmark 1972 trip, said it was halting domestic sales after its products were found to contain melamine, normally used to make...

European Union regulators Thursday ordered rigorous testing of imports containing at least 15 percent milk powder after concluding that food containing tainted milk powder from China may well be circulating in Europe and putting children at risk. The action, announced by the European Food Safety Authority and the European Commission, significantly expands the potential geographic reach of a milk adulteration scandal in China to now include a range of foods sold around the world. The Europeans said cookies, toffees and chocolates were the major concerns. The World Health Organization and the Unicef also expressed concern Thursday about the Chinese milk...

Chinese Milk Worker: Complaints Ignored For Years by Louisa Lim Louisa Lim/NPR Whistle-blower Jiang Weisuo, a milk station operator, says chemicals were being added to milk in 2005. His attempts to expose the practice have resulted in huge financial losses and threats on his life, he says. Louisa Lim/NPR Milk collection stations like this one are at the heart of the scandal over contaminated milk. Morning Edition, September 25, 2008 · Milk contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine has sickened more than 50,000 children in China in recent weeks. But the practice of adulterating milk seems to have started far...

(LEAD) S. Korea finds harmful chemical in Chinese creamer product SEOUL, Sept. 26 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's health authorities said Friday they have found traces of a harmful chemical in a Chinese creamer product used in instant coffee mixes. The discovery of melamine, which can cause kidney problems and even death in severe cases, follows a confirmation by the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) on Thursday that two types of snacks sold domestically contained traces of the industrial chemical. Both products were imported from China. Seoul started scrutinizing imported dairy products after several Chinese manufacturers were found to have...

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Two baby orang-utans and a lion cub have become the latest victims of China's contaminated milk crisis. The animals, at at Hangzhou Zoo near Shanghai, developed kidney stones after being fed milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.

List of Nations Banning Chinese Milk Products Grows By VOA News 25 September 2008 South Korea is the latest nation to ban imports of Chinese dairy products after discovering Chinese-made snacks contained a chemical that has sickened thousands of children who consumed contaminated milk. The Korean Food and Drug Administration, KFDA, says tests on more than 100 products found the chemical melamine in two biscuit-type snacks. Officials ordered the products to be removed from store shelves and destroyed. More than a dozen governments in Asia, Africa and Europe have either banned or recalled Chinese dairy products since the scandal broke...

Government outlet provides safe, special food for the nation’s leaders BEIJING - While China grapples with its latest tainted food crisis, the political elite are served the choicest, safest delicacies. They get hormone-free beef from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, organic tea from the foothills of Tibet and rice watered by melted mountain snow. And it’s all supplied by a special government outfit that provides all-organic goods from farms working under the strictest guidelines.

Australia and New Zealand issued recalls Thursday for an imported Chinese candy that was found to contain the industrial chemical melamine. New Zealand Food Safety Authority spokesman Geoff Allen said Thursday morning that he expected the White Rabbit Creamy Candies to be off shelves within 24 hours. "This product contains sufficiently high levels of melamine which may, in some individuals, cause health problems such as kidney stones," deputy chief executive Sandra Daly said in a statement posted Wednesday on the agency's Web site. "The levels we have found in these products are unacceptable."

South Korea Finds Melamine in Foods Imported From China Posted on: Wednesday, 24 September 2008, 12:00 CDT Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap [Yonhap headline: "(LEAD) Melamine Found in Imported Confections From China"] Seoul, Sept. 24 (Yonhap) - South Korea's food safety agency on Wednesday put a temporary import ban on Chinese products containing powdered milk after tests on two confections revealed traces of the toxic chemical melamine. Tests on "Misarang Custard" cake, which a Chinese firm produced on an original equipment manufacturing for South Korea's Haitai Confectionery and Foods Co., were undertaken by the...

Sanlu claims appalling if true: Fonterra 24th September 2008, 12:03 WST Claims a dairy company knew of China's tainted milk scandal eight months ago and lied about it would be appalling if true, Fonterra chief Andrew Ferrier says. At the release of Fonterra's annual results on Wednesday, Ferrier was swamped by questions about the Chinese dairy company Sanlu, which is 43 per cent owned by Fonterra. So far at least four children have died after drinking powdered milk tainted with the chemical melamine, 54,000 have fallen ill and about 13,000 have been admitted to hospital with kidney problems. A Chinese...

Tainted Milk Powder Scandal: Health Ministry National Internal Teleconference Reveals Top Secret By Translated by chinafreepress.org Sep 21, 2008 - 11:02:23 AM http://news.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2008/09/200809202358.shtml Tainted Milk Powder Scandal: Health Ministry National Internal Teleconference Reveals Top Secret According to a boxun.com report, on Friday September 19 the Ministry of Health held a national internal teleconference. Every region's large hospital section chiefs and other concerned important officials participated. According to informed sources, this was the second time this month this type of conference was held. The teleconference revealed the true circumstances behind the tainted milk powder scandal. Milk powder factories have been illegally...

China's Tainted Food Products Only Harm the Average People, High-Ranking Officials Have Their Own Specially-Supplied Food Sources By Sep 20, 2008 - 7:22:49 PM China's Tainted Food Products Only Harm the Average People, High-Ranking Officials Have Their Own Specially-Supplied Food Sources While China's food security crisis has resulted in Chinese people fearing that nothing is safe to eat, a source has revealed that China has always had one special source of food and supply network: that which serves national Communist Party and government officials. This food is specially produced, transported, and examined, according to especially strict standards. On August 18,...

Melamine in pesticides, human food chain - experts HONG KONG, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Melamine, a chemical that has tainted milk formula and made thousands of Chinese children ill, is used as an agricultural pesticide in China and may have been part of our food chain for a long time, experts said on Tuesday. Chan King-ming, associate professor of biochemistry at the Chinese University, said cyromazine, a derivative of melamine, was very commonly used in China as a pesticide. "It is absorbed into plants as melamine ... of course it is already in our food chain and animal feed," Chan...

Nearly 53,000 children in China have been sickened by milk powder contaminated by an industrial chemical, the government said Monday, dramatically ramping up its previous figures. Earlier the health ministry said 12,892 infants were in hospital with 104 babies in serious condition, according to the official Xinhua news agency. As the World Health Organization questioned Beijing's handling of the crisis, premier Wen Jiabao appeared on state television promising to head off further incidents. But a Hong Kong toddler also became the first child affected outside the mainland and more countries moved to bar Chinese milk products. The scandal stems from...

Nearly 53,000 children in China have become sick from milk powder contaminated by an industrial chemical, the government has said. A total of 52,857 children had been brought to hospitals after falling ill, a Health Ministry spokesman said. Most had "basically recovered" but 12,892 of them remained hospitalised, he added. The ministry said the toll of children ill from milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine had risen dramatically from the previous figure of 6,244. A further 39,965 children had "received clinical treatment and advice" before being sent home. More than 80 per cent of the sick were aged...

Nearly 13,000 children in China have been hospitalised due to tainted Chinese milk powder, officials say. China's health ministry said 104 out of 12,892 babies showed serious symptoms. Four infants have died after drinking the milk of the Sanlu Group containing the industrial chemical melamine, which could cause urinary problems. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a toddler has been diagnosed with a kidney stone after drinking the powder - the first such case outside mainland China. A number of Asian and African countries have now banned Chinese dairy imports following the scandal. Chinese police have arrested 18 people in connection with...

- Food and milk from the offspring of cloned animals may already have entered the U.S. food supply, the Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday, but it would be impossible to know because there is no difference between cloned and conventional products. The FDA said in January meat and milk from cloned cattle, swine and goats and their offspring were as safe to eat as products obtained from traditional animals. Before then, farmers and ranchers had followed a voluntary moratorium that prevented the sale of clones and their offspring. "It is theoretically possible" offspring from clones are in the...

The path from the lab to the marketplace for genetically modified cows, pigs and chickens has been clearly spelled out for the first time....But the only engineered animal to reach consumers thus far is a pet fish that glows in the dark.

China's tainted milk crisis has spilled over the mainland's borders when supplies from international food giants were found to be contaminated with the poisonous additive melamine. Hong Kong authorities said it had found traces of melamine in Nestle's Dairy Farm milk produced for catering use by a company subsidiary in the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, the site of the Olympics sailing events. Supermarkets in Hong Kong had already pulled Nestle's milk powder from the shelves amid media reports that the territory's government had found a sample that had been tainted. However Nestle released a statement said: ""Following press reports...

Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has said that its laboratory test have shown that the "White Rabbit Creamy Candy" from China is also contaminated with melamine. Consumers who have bought the affected products are advised not to consume them, the AVA said in a statement. The latest test results bring the total number of milk and related products from China imported into Singapore that are found to be contaminated with melamine to three. The other two affected products are "Yili Brand" Choice Dairy Fruit Bar Yogurt Flavoured Ice Confection" and "Dutch Lady" brand of strawberry flavoured milk. All the...

(BEIJING) -- In the wake of the contaminated baby milk powder scandal, Chinese quality watchdog on Wednesday cancelled all kinds of national inspection exemptions previously given to food producers. "Considering the particular characteristics of food products and the complexity in the cause of food safety problems, and with a view to further enhancing supervision over food producers, ensuring food safety and protecting consumers' interests," said the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) in an explanation of the move. It said relevant companies must stop activities of publicizing their national inspection exemption qualifications. The national inspection exemption labels...

(ZHENGZHOU) -- As problems with baby milk products arouse worries of Chinese families over food safety, scientists say they are to invent a kind of paper to test food safety. The paper will work very fast and it will be inexpensive to suit household consumption, according to scientists at the 10th annual conference of the China Association for Science and Technology, held in Zhengzhou in Henan Province from Sept. 17 to 19. Shi Lei, professor with the South China University of Technology, said the testing paper targeting single toxicity has been invented long ago. Scientists are now working on the...

Starbucks stops serving milk as China crisis snowballs by Fran Wang Fri Sep 19, 4:20 PM ET Starbucks stopped serving drinks with milk in many Chinese outlets Friday as a crisis over poisoned dairy products that have left four babies dead and thousands of others sick spiralled. The move by the US coffee chain came amid a government-ordered mass recall of dairy products after an industrial chemical, initially reported to be only in milk powder, was also detected in regular milk, yoghurt and ice cream. Supermarket shelves across the country were emptied of many products made by Chinese dairy giants...

Two fall sick after eating Chinese bean paste in Japan Sat Sep 20, 1:26 AM ET Two employees of a Japanese confectionery company fell sick after eating China-made bean paste in the latest apparent food scare here, police and the firm said Saturday. The workers at Marusei Honten confectionery in central Nagano prefecture noticed a strange smell like petroleum oil when they opened the five-kilogram (11-pound) package of red-bean paste on Friday, police said. They tasted it to check on the quality and felt sick soon afterwards, police said.

CHINA'S poisoned milk disaster widened yesterday, with the Government's food safety agency announcing that 10 per cent of the liquid milk it has tested is contaminated, as well as 14 per cent of the baby formula. Hong Kong's food watchdog has also discovered pollutants in Chinese ice cream and yoghurt. China's whole food chain appears to be under some threat of contamination as a result, with tests now being extended to animal feed. A team of 31 lawyers operating in 14 provinces and cities of China yesterday offered to represent for free the parents of sick babies in legal actions...

HK and Seoul act on China baby-milk fears By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai Published: September 18 2008 09:09 | Last updated: September 18 2008 16:45 China’s tainted infant-formula scandal spread to other parts of east Asia on Thursday as food-safety officials in South Korea and Hong Kong said they would investigate or recall Chinese products. The Chinese government, which is scrambling to reduce damage to the image of “Made in China”, announced more arrests in connection with the milk-powder crisis, which claimed its fourth victim on Thursday.

BEIJING: Hong Kong has ordered the recall of a Chinese company's products after milk, ice cream and yogurt were found to be contaminated with melamine, the compound responsible for killing four children in a health scandal. Tainted milk powder produced in China has made thousands ill, and triggered sackings and detentions and rocked public trust already battered by a litany of food safety scares involving tainted eggs, pork and seafood in recent years. Now the scandal has spread to milk, ice-cream and yogurt ice-bars. Hong Kong ordered the recall of a Chinese company's products on Thursday after tests found that...

A scandal over tainted infant formula spread Monday as authorities acknowledged as many as 10,000 babies may have ingested milk powder laced with the same chemical found in contaminated pet-food exports last year that caused scores of U.S. animals to die. Melamine, a chemical in making plastics and fertilizers, has been used by Chinese businesses to boost protein readings in animal feed and other food products. Pet foods containing melamine-laced ingredients traced to China sickened and killed thousands of dogs and cats in the U.S. last year. Many infants who were fed Sanlu milk powder were stricken with kidney stones....

Really, it would be better to simply avoid eating anything in China at all. If more than 20 companies have been caught using melamine in their products, it is highly likely that hundreds if not thousands of other food producers in China are guilty of similar violations; San Lu just happens to be one of the unlucky companies that was found out. These days, I have much more to worry about than just the air that I am breathing in China. Every time I put food in my mouth I soberly realize that I may very well be ingesting chemicals...

More than 6,200 babies have fallen ill after drinking formula milk made from contaminated powder, Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu has announced. The figure is five times higher than previously announced. Mr Chen said a third baby had now died - with the latest fatality occurring in the Zhejiang province of eastern China. Twenty-two brands of powder were found to contain the toxic industrial chemical melamine, apparently added to make it appear higher in protein. Mr Chen said a total of 6,244 infants were now sick, and that the number of those diagnosed with "acute kidney failure" had risen to...

Probe finds 20 pct of China milk companies in scandal 16 Sep 2008 14:32:23 GMT Source: Reuters (Recasts with results of state investigation) By Ben Blanchard SHIJIAZHUANG, China, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Twenty percent of Chinese dairy firms probed in the wake of a baby milk health scare have been found to have produced melamine-tainted formula, state media reported on Tuesday. Chinese quality officials last week ordered a nationwide probe into all baby milk powders after it was reported that dozens of children had developed kidney stones after drinking tainted formula produced by the Sanlu Group. Two infants have since...

China mothers flock to Hong Kong for safe baby milk 17 Sep 2008 00:57:28 GMT Source: Reuters HONG KONG, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Thousands of mothers from China have flocked to Hong Kong to buy milk powder manufactured overseas, as a tainted milk powder scandal spreads, newspapers said on Wednesday. Pharmacies and supermarkets along the rail line linking Hong Kong to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen experienced "panic buying of overseas milk powder brands", the South China Morning Post reported. The paper quoted Lau Oi-kwok, chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Pharmacy, as saying mainland mothers were...

More than 1,200 infants sick in China tainted milk scandal BEIJING, Sept. 15 KYODO More than 1,200 infants are now known to have been made sick after they were fed milk powder at the center of a food contamination scandal in China, the government said Monday. Some 1,253 infants have developed kidney stones after drinking milk formula sold by the dairy firm Sanlu, which contained the chemical melamine, the Health Ministry said in a statement. Two of the infants from the northern province of Gansu have died. The Health Ministry said 340 children are in hospital and 53 of the...

At the end of a dirt road in northern Mexico, the conveyer belts processing hundreds of tons of vegetables a year for U.S. and Mexican markets are open to the elements, protected only by a corrugated metal roof. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects this packing plant, its warehouse in McAllen, Texas, and a farm in Mexico are among the sources of the United States' largest outbreak of food-borne illness in a decade, which infected at least 1,440 people with a rare form of salmonella. A plant manager confirmed to The Associated Press that workers handling chili peppers aren't...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Twelve people have now died out of 26 confirmed cases of food poisoning linked to deli meats produced at a plant owned by Maple Leaf Foods Inc, Canadian health officials said Monday. There are another 29 suspected cases of listeriosis, officials told reporters, and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said the government expected more cases in coming days. Maple Leaf Foods, one of Canada's biggest meat processors, had said it hoped to reopen the Toronto plant associated with the outbreak on Tuesday, but health officials said they will test and hold all meat produced there until they...

Canadians are being told to dig through their fridges and freezers for any of the 220 Maple Leaf Foods products recalled by the Toronto-based company after test results linked a plant in north Toronto to a nationwide listeriosis outbreak. The recall is one of the biggest in Canadian history, federal officials said yesterday. Michael McCain, president and chief executive officer of the 100-year-old company, said the expanded recall will cost the company an estimated $20 million in refunds to consumers and in plant cleanup. In the wake of four deaths, "we had to take the most conservative approach possible," McCain...

Health regulators have approved the use of ionizing radiation for fresh spinach and lettuce, saying the technique already approved for other foods can help control harmful bacteria and other pathogens. The Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday the radiation treatment also would make the leafy greens last longer and give them greater "shelf-life" for retailers and consumers. The approval comes two years after E. coli outbreaks linked to spinach and lettuce sold in grocery stores and served at various restaurants. Outbreaks of the dangerous bacteria sickened dozens of consumers and led some to be hospitalized. In severe cases, patients...

The Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) mandate will go into effect by September 30, 2008 in the USA. This mandate will help with concerns over food safety in the nation. When a food safety issue occurs, the country of origin label will help in notifying consumers the type of food and its country of origin, so they could avoid purchasing that particular item. The new labels will give consumers more information, but the costs may be passed on to them. Backgrounder. Click for more information.

The salmonella strain linked to a nationwide outbreak has been found in irrigation water and a serrano pepper at a Mexican farm, federal health officials said Wednesday. "We have a smoking gun, it appears," said Dr. Lonnie King who directs the center for foodborne illnesses at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA continues its habit of making mountains out of mole hills. The discovery of a single jalapeño with Salmonella Saintpaul at the warehouse of a tiny distributor named Agricola Zaragoza on the McAllen Produce Terminal Market simply doesn’t mean very much. ...Once again, needlessly and with reckless disregard for the rights of innocent people, the FDA has destroyed an industry. ...Dr. Acheson thinks that it is within his authority to destroy the fortunes of innocents. ...Repeating the words “public health” as a mantra, though, does not make it true. The bottom line is that the risk for healthy people...

WASHINGTON - Investigators are seeing more signs that the salmonella outbreak blamed on tomatoes might have been caused by tainted jalapeno peppers and have begun collecting samples from restaurants and from the homes of those who have been sickened, according to health officials involved in the probe. New interviews with those who became infected found that many had eaten jalapeno peppers, often in salsa served with Mexican food, according to two state health officials. So far, none of the jalapenos taken from restaurants and from the homes of those who became ill have tested positive for Salmonella saintpaul. Echoing federal...

LOS ANGELES — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Department of Water and Power are expected to announce on May 15 a revised water use and management plan for this city that includes using recycled wastewater to recharge drinking water aquifers, according to a May 15 Los Angeles Times article. The new plan allocates about $1 billion for the proposed reclamation system, also known as “toilet-to-tap” or “sewer-to-spigot.” The city would recycle about 4.9 billion gallons of treated wastewater to drinking standards by 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported on May 15. Villaraigosa, who less than a decade ago opposed such...

WASHINGTON—In March, inspectors checking Chinese seafood arriving at U.S. ports made some unsettling discoveries: fish infected with salmonella in Baltimore and Seattle, and shrimp with banned veterinary drugs in Florida. Meanwhile, a shipment intercepted in Los Angeles on March 19 and labeled "channel catfish" wasn't catfish at all, though records don't say what it was. "A lot of those products coming in from overseas, you have no clue as to what is in them," said Paul Hitchens, an aquaculture specialist in Southern Illinois, where cut-rate Chinese catfish are threatening the livelihood of fish farmers. China rapidly has become the leading...

Dr. Mom Was Right -- And Wrong -- About Washing Fruits And VegetablesA new study shows that irradiation could be key to removing hard-to-reach pathogens inside fruits and vegetables. (Credit: Courtesy of USDA-Agricultural Research Service, photo by Stephen Ausmus) ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2008) — Washing fresh fruits and vegetables before eating may reduce the risk of food poisoning and those awful episodes of vomiting and diarrhea. But according to new research, described recently at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, washing alone -- even with chlorine disinfectants -- may not be enough. Studies show that certain disease-causing...

Food safety an issue within China as well Commentary: International and domestic brands will benefit By Bruce McLaughlin Last update: 6:17 a.m. EDT April 14, 2008 SHANGHAI (MarketWatch) -- Chinese food safety scares are to the business press what movie starlets going into rehab are to the tabloid press. Late last month, Chinese consumers faced yet another food-safety scandal. This time, officials in Guangdong Province seized more than 4,000 boxes of milk from Zhuhai Weiwei Deheng Dairy Co after over 100 kindergarten students who had drunk the milk reportedly became sick. Food scares have become worryingly regular here, and consumer...