Sales of Mexican vegetables plummet after hepatitis outbreak

AP ^ | November 26, 2003 | Olga Rodriguez

[Pro-Bush]

Who wants to eat veggies covered with sh*t?

[Revelation 911]

mexican food generally "plummets" as the title suggests

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[farmfriend]

Who wants to eat veggies covered with sh*t?

All those people who think we should just cut off farm subsidies before we get rid of the envrironmental regs that would drive them out of business. I keep hearing things like, if they can't compete they should do something else.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Libertina]

In mainland China they use human waste to fertilize... yuk.

[hedgetrimmer]

All your processed garlic, paste, minced etc comes from China. They are processed here, grown there in most cases.

The last big garlic farmer in California went out of business last summer.

[Libertina]

LOL Glad I used fresh and mince my own :)

[hedgetrimmer]

Many restaurants purchase the processed garlic, so you probably eat chinese garlic without knowing it.

Also, most honey used as food sweeteners in this country come from China as well. See the next link for an interesting article.

[hedgetrimmer]

Text: Dumping Investigation Uncovers Contaminated Honey from China
(Inquiry also covers Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand)

The U.S. Customs Service and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that they have discovered bulk imports of Chinese honey contaminated with low levels of a potentially harmful antibiotic and unapproved food additive.

According to a joint press release issued August 28, the contaminated honey was detected during an investigation into a widespread scheme to evade payment of U.S. anti-dumping duties on bulk imports of Chinese honey. The honey allegedly had been transshipped illegally through third-party countries on its way from China to the United States.

The release notes that, as part of the investigation, Customs and FDA agents have executed search warrants on businesses and residences in several U.S. cities. In addition, Australian Customs, Royal Malaysian Customs, and Royal Thai Customs have also executed warrants in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Additional enforcement activity is anticipated in the investigation.

Following is the text of the joint Customs/FDA release:

(begin text)


U.S. Customs Service and Food and Drug Administration

The U.S. Customs Service (Customs) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced that they have discovered bulk imports of Chinese honey that were contaminated with low levels of chloramphenicol (CAP), a potentially harmful antibiotic and unapproved food additive. The contaminated honey was detected during an investigation into a widespread scheme to evade payment of U.S. anti-dumping duties on bulk imports of Chinese honey.

To date, the investigation has resulted in the detention of more than 50 containers of bulk Chinese honey at U.S. ports. In an effort to evade U.S. anti-dumping duties, this honey had allegedly been illegally transshipped through third-party countries on its way from China to America.

Some of the bulk honey in these containers has tested positive for chloramphenicol, an antibiotic used, in most cases, only to treat life-threatening infections in humans when other alternatives are not available. Use of chloramphenicol is limited because this antibiotic is associated with a very rare, but potentially life-threatening side effect -- idiosyncratic aplastic anemia. For the very small number of people susceptible to this side effect, exposure to chloramphenicol could be serious. A "safe" limit of chloramphenicol for such people has not been established. Nevertheless, the probability of this reaction occurring in the general population from food exposure is thought to be very low.

To protect the public from unnecessary exposure to potentially harmful substances, food and animal feed products containing chloramphenicol are illegal in the United States. Currently, Customs is stopping all suspect bulk honey imports to this country for the FDA to determine whether they contain chloramphenicol. Any shipments containing chloramphenicol will be detained. The FDA is unaware at present of contaminated honey being on retail shelves, but is continuing its investigation into this matter. Thus far, no illnesses have been reported in association with the imported honey.

As part of the investigation, Customs and FDA agents during the past week have executed search warrants on businesses and residences in Los Angeles, Newark, Tampa, and other locations. Australian Customs, Royal Malaysian Customs, and Royal Thai Customs have also executed warrants in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Additional enforcement activity is anticipated in the investigation.

"This investigation should serve notice that U.S. Customs will not tolerate unfair trading practices, especially those that pose potential health risks to the American public," said U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner. "This case is an excellent example of cooperation between U.S. Customs, the FDA, as well as authorities in Australia, Thailand, and Malaysia."

"We will continue to work with our federal and international partners to ensure that products that cross our borders meet our high standards for food safety," said FDA Deputy Commissioner Dr. Lester M. Crawford. "The FDA will take whatever action is necessary to protect the public health from these kinds of activities."

The probe into this scheme began primarily as a dumping investigation. Dumping of a product occurs when merchandise manufactured outside of the United States is sold in the United States at a price that is below the cost of production, or below the price sold in the foreign home market. Foreign manufacturers and or/importers may dump products on the U.S. market in order to gain market share because of political or social concerns or to maximize profits/minimize losses in production.

In Sept. 2000, several U.S. honey producers filed an unfair trade case alleging dumping of honey imports from China. In May 2001, the U.S. Commerce Department issued a notice of preliminary determination which required U.S. Customs to collect anti-dumping duties on imports of natural bees honey from certain Chinese companies. The duty rates increased between 34 and 184 percent.

The U.S. Customs Attaché in Bangkok, Thailand, subsequently received information that certain honey exports from China were allegedly being illegally transshipped through Thailand en route to the United States. The purpose of the alleged transshipment scheme was to circumvent payment of anti-dumping duties on Chinese honey imports to the United States.

In June 2002, U.S. Customs Attachés in Bangkok and Singapore launched an investigation and began working with their law enforcement counterparts in Australia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Officials from the Royal Thai Customs, Royal Malaysian Customs, and Australian Customs provided substantial assistance. Several domestic U.S. Customs offices joined the investigation, including those in Los Angeles, Newark, Tampa, Houston, Detroit, and Seattle.

Soon, Customs agents found that U.S.-bound Chinese bulk honey was allegedly being transshipped through Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and other nations to evade U.S. anti-dumping duties. During the investigation, Customs officers in Los Angeles drew samples of bulk Chinese honey from several detained containers that had arrived at the local port. A laboratory analysis found that the honey samples contained chloramphenicol. Customs notified the FDA, which immediately joined the investigation given the health issues associated with chloramphenicol. Analysis by FDA laboratories confirmed the presence of chloramphenicol in the imported Chinese honey.

Since the discovery of chloramphenicol in the Chinese honey imports, Customs has been stopping all suspect bulk imports of honey for the FDA to test for the presence of chloramphenicol. The FDA has developed a method to confirm chloramphenicol levels in honey at one part per billion.

The FDA and Customs are continuing to coordinate their enforcement strategies and will be detaining or seizing any honey imports that contain chloramphenicol to ensure that they are not released for human or animal consumption in the United States.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov) NNNN

[hedgetrimmer]

In June, the FDA announced it would increase testing of imported shrimp and crayfish for chloramphenicol. The move followed reports that health agencies in Louisiana, Canada, and Europe had found chloramphenicol in shrimp and crayfish from China and Vietnam. At that time, the FDA said China had banned the use of chloramphenicol in food animals and feed in March. The agency also said Chinese officials reported that they were starting to test shrimp, crayfish, and other exported food products for chloramphenicol and other drug residues.

See also:

News release from the FDA and Customs Service
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2002/NEW00831.html

[hedgetrimmer]

U.S. honey producers stung by importsNews Story
Index

By Marilyn Bay Wentz
U.S. honey production is anything but sweet these days as producer prices have dropped to about half of what they were in 1995.

“I’m sitting on 600,000 pounds of honey I can’t get anyone to buy (at a reasonable price),” said Mark Brady, a 47-year-old honey producer from Waxahachie, Texas, just 30 miles south of Dallas. “The best offer I can get at this time is 42 cents a pound from a buyer who told me to ‘come back when I get desperate’.”

With 6,000 hives or about 300 million bees, Brady is one of the state’s largest honey producers. He estimates his cost of production for honey at 60-70 cents per pound.
Rocky Mountain Farmers Union member Paul Hendricks of Englewood, Colo., says most cost-of-production estimates he has heard are even higher, in the 80-cent to $1.15-per-pound range.

The cause of the precipitous drop in producer prices, according to the beekeeping industry, is excessive below-cost-of-production honey imports from China and Argentina. In 1999, Argentina supplied 95 million pounds or nearly one-third of the U.S. demand for honey. China sold 48 million pounds into the U.S. market, which is about one-sixth of the U.S. honey market.

The glut of honey has led to plunging producer prices, resulting in U.S. beekeepers going out of business or operating in the red. In July, the nation’s largest beekeeper Horace Bell Honey Company, near Orlando, Fl., announced it would go out of business, putting its 40,000 hives on the auction block.


“The beekeepers that are still in business are expending the equity in their operations, but that can only last for so long,” Brady said. “For me, I keep hanging on because every dime I have is invested in this business.”
Producers like Brady and Hendricks are hopeful an anti-dumping petition against China and Argentina will be their salvation. U.S. honey producers are gathering pledges for the $700,000 it will take to file the petition. They have gathered two-thirds of the money and hope to file the petition with the U.S. International Trade Commission sometime in October.

“We have to pay for studies to prove China and Argentina are selling honey into the U.S. market below their costs of production and also that this action is injuring U.S. producers,” said Richard Adee, president of the American Honey Producers Association. “Not only is there a dumping issue, but in the case of Argentina, its honey producers receive subsidies.”

According to Adee, the petition will request that tariffs and quotas be levied against the Chinese and Argentine honey imports. “Both of these countries labor costs are lower than the United States. We favor free trade but only if it is fair trade.”

In the United States, it is estimated that 35 percent the cost of producing honey is the cost of labor.
U.S. honey producers have already been successful with an anti-dumping petition. In 1995, they won a similar suit, which resulted in the United States imposing a quota and minimum price for Chinese honey. The minimum price, which expired July 31, 2000, helped restore 1995 prices from 50 cents a pound to 90-95 cents a pound.

Despite today’s plummeting producer prices, consumer honey prices remain virtually unchanged. Currently, more than half of the honey on U.S. supermarket shelves is imported, a fact that has become a bur under the saddle for U.S. producers who are mandated to pay a portion of their honey proceeds into a national marketing and promotion fund.
The promotion program is distasteful to producers who say they are being forced to promote their competitors. As a result, they have asked for a referendum on continuing it.
“U.S. honey producers have an opportunity Sept. 5-30 to vote on whether or not they want to continue paying to promote foreign honey which is putting them out of business,” Hendricks said. “The problem is that the promotions are generic. They do not specifically promote American honey.”

While honey may not seem to be a mainstay in the American diet, it is heavily used in processed foods, especially in breakfast cereals, breads and confectionary items. But there is another area in which the beekeeping industry is vital to U.S. agriculture.

“We perform a valuable service for all of agriculture through pollination of plants,” Brady said. “Livestock producers need us because they will not have alfalfa hay without bees to pollinate it. In fact, 30 percent of food plants need honey bee pollination.”

Brady, who says beekeepers can no longer survive unless they also have pollination work, has been asked to increase his hives for use in seed alfalfa pollination.
“I provide bees for 1,000 acres of seed alfalfa. The grower would like to increase his production to 5,000 acres, but I just cannot take the risk,” Brady said. “Even with the pollination contract, beekeeping is a money-losing business. Unless the anti-dumping petition brings us relief, we cannot make it.”

Other agricultural sectors have already begun to suffer from the difficulties facing U.S. beekeepers.
According to Hendricks, there has recently been a shortage of bees used in pollination of California’s almond crop. It takes 1700 semi-loads of bees to pollinate California’s almonds and 70 percent of the world’s almonds are grown in California. Bees also are vital to the pollination of many other crops, including cucumbers and melons.

“There will be a domino effect,” Hendricks said. “As commercial beekeepers fold, food costs will increase.” (Sep. 14, 2000)

[hedgetrimmer]

It looks like quite a lot of food imported from China is contaminated with Chloramphenicol.

Here is a story about shrimp to go with the story about honey. Is this an example of China's asymetrical warfare, selling us contaminated food?
--

Contaminated Seafood Risks Americans’ Health

Banned in EU; Restricted in Canada. The European Union has banned — and Canada has severely restricted — imports of shrimp from China and other countries due to contamination by a dangerous toxin: Chloramphenicol. But food contaminated with this dangerous drug is coming into the United States with virtually no inspection at all.

Chloramphenicol Can Be Fatal. Chloramphenicol is a potent antibiotic used in aquaculture ponds in less-developed countries. Chloramphenicol can cause severe toxic effects in humans — especially hypo-aplastic anemia, in which bone marrow stops producing red blood cells. The condition is usually irreversible and fatal. The drug is administered to humans only in life-threatening situations when less toxic drugs are not effective.

Chloramphenicol Used in China, Thailand, Vietnam. Chloramphenicol is used by seafood exporters in Thailand and Vietnam, the top two exporters of shrimp to the United States. The drug is also used in China, the fifth largest exporter of shrimp to the United States.

Americans Eat 3 Pounds of Shrimp Each Year. The United States imports most of the shrimp it consumes: 400,000 metric tons each year. From Thailand alone, the U.S. imported 140,000 metric tons of shrimp. The percentage of imported shrimp is rising each year.

FDA Inspections Rare. The FDA inspects only 2 percent of all seafood imports into the United States. The FDA’s system for detecting Chloramphenicol is inferior to the testing used by the EU and Canada, which has found the drug in shrimp exported from the Far East. The testing protocol used in Europe and Canada can detect such drugs to 0.3 parts per billion (ppb), while FDA uses a technique that only measures to 3 ppb. The FDA has a "zero-tolerance" policy for unapproved drugs — including Chloramphenicol — in both domestic and imported fish and seafood. If the drug is detected in an import shipment, the FDA prohibits entry.

Independent Testing Finds Toxin. While the FDA has not found Chloramphenicol in imported shrimp due to lax inspection and inferior testing systems, independent state testing has found these drugs in U.S. food imports. The State of Louisiana detected chloramphenicol at a level of over 2 ppb in Chinese crawfish.

Amendment Would Expand Evidence FDA Can Rely On. The EU has banned imports of honey, shrimp, rabbit meat, poultry, and pet food from countries where use of Chloramphenicol has been found. Canada now "holds and tests" every shipment of shrimp from China and Vietnam. The proposed amendment would 1) allow testing by state and other FDA approved entities - not just by FDA; and 2) allow US to hold and test suspected contaminated shipments.

Keep Contaminated Seafood From Heading to U.S. With the EU and Canada taking action to block imports of contaminated shrimp, exporters will attempt to send even more contaminated product to the United States. Therefore, we must protect America’s public health by stepping up our inspection of imported seafood.

[garandgal]

On a thread last week, I was called all sorts of awful names for suggesting that a safe, wholesome, food supply was important to the continued success of our country. I also happen to think that all products that are necessary to our national defense should be produced here.

WHAT, may I ask, is so controversial about that view?? To previous generations, that would have been obvious; anyone who disagreed would have, rightly, had their motives questioned...and probably would have been run out of town!

[hedgetrimmer]

Here is the fallout from the honey dumping...

Our food security is affected:
Other agricultural sectors have already begun to suffer from the difficulties facing U.S. beekeepers.
According to Hendricks, there has recently been a shortage of bees used in pollination of California’s almond crop. It takes 1700 semi-loads of bees to pollinate California’s almonds and 70 percent of the world’s almonds are grown in California. Bees also are vital to the pollination of many other crops, including cucumbers and melons.

“There will be a domino effect,” Hendricks said. “As commercial beekeepers fold, food costs will increase.”

[hedgetrimmer]

The people who oppose your suggestion are neoliberals who believe that trade should exist without ethics and global socialists who want to take America down a notch by making her less secure and unable to defend herself.

[texastoo]

Thanks for posting the additional article.

Last week I read an article from Mexico about smugglers of textiles and shoes into Mexico. They mentioned other objects but didn't name them. These items could be labeled from Mexico via NAFTA to the U.S. It could very well be food.

Nothing surprises me anymore about the so called free trade.

I think we need to demand that all produce and meat be labeled from the country of origin. After all it is American citizens who are getting sick and dying.

[hedgetrimmer]

I need to go back and check but I think there was very recently a bill in Congress about labeling food origin, that was postponed for 3 years.

15 years ago the farm corporations asked for a similar bill because Americans do want to buy American produced food, but now that they have gone global, they don't want you to know anymore. There are quite a few players in Mexico these days, some are American companies. They like the lack of regulation down there and don't want you to know they are producing your food there.