Posted on 05/25/2007 4:48:21 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
SHANGHAI, China — As the tainted pet-food recall mushroomed into an international scandal, two of the largest U.S. food manufacturers put out a blanket order to their American suppliers: no more ingredients from China.
The directive from Mission Foods Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc., made quietly earlier this month, underscored consumers’ and manufacturers’ fears about the safety of imported food ingredients after contaminated wheat products from China killed and sickened cats and dogs in the United States.
The problem is, what Mission and Tyson want is next to impossible.
In the last decade, China has become the world’s leading supplier of many food flavorings, vitamins and preservatives. Like fingernail clippers, playing cards, Christmas ornaments and other items, some food additives are available in large quantities only from China.
China exported $2.5 billion of food ingredients to the United States and the rest of the world in 2006, an increase of 150 percent from just two years earlier, according to Chinese industry estimates. It is now the predominant maker of vanilla flavoring, citric acid and varieties of Vitamin B such as thiamine, riboflavin and folic acid — nutrients commonly added to processed flour goods such as Mission tortillas and Tyson breaded chicken.
“It would be somewhat difficult to move away from all the vitamins in China,” said Monte White, president of Research Products Co., a large supplier of nutrients for flour mixes. He said his Salina, Kan.-based company was stepping up its testing of imported goods, despite having had “very consistent results” from China in the last five years.
China’s overall food safety record is poor. Use of chemical fertilizers and toxic pesticides is heavy. Fraud and corruption often thwart what lax controls exist. In recent years, U.S. officials have issued alerts about Chinese honey tainted with a harmful antibiotic; Chinese candy containing sulfites that can cause fatal allergic reactions; and infant formula missing vital nutrients, which in China left a dozen babies dead in 2004.
A small group of large manufacturers dominate the production of food ingredients in China, but hundreds if not thousands of small, virtually anonymous businesses — like the two linked to the pet-food scandal — operate in an industry lacking tough standards and enforcement.
“Some of them are driven by profits; you can see dollar signs in their eyes,” said Jan Willem Roben, head of Vision Ingredients, a Shanghai-based trader of food additives.
TAINTED PET FOOD RAISED AWARENESS
In the U.S., major food manufacturers often don’t know where all their ingredients originate. Mission, a Texas-based unit of Mexican food giant Gruma, would not comment about that or its directive, but said it was working with its suppliers to ensure the products were safe. Arkansas-based Tyson, one of the nation’s largest providers of beef and chicken, did not respond to interview requests.
Many packaged foods contain dozens of items from around the world, acquired through complex networks of traders and brokers, before reaching manufacturing plants where companies have more direct oversight.
“Until now, companies just didn’t care about commodity additives,” said Laszlo Somogyi, an authority on food sciences in Kensington, Calif. “But that might be changing now. This was a warning,” he said, referring to the pet-food debacle.
Somogyi believes tainted food additives pose a relatively low risk to humans because such ingredients are used in tiny amounts in any given product. Still, it wasn’t until the pet-food poisoning that people learned that melamine, an industrial chemical banned in foods in the U.S., had been widely added to animal feed in China to artificially boost its protein level.
“The same thing could have happened in the human food chain,” said Somogyi.
Chinese-made ingredients are likely found in every aisle of American supermarkets. Consider that American favorite, the Hostess Twinkie. Of its 39 ingredients, at least a half-dozen — such as Vitamin B compounds, the preservative sorbic acid and red and yellow colorings — are mostly likely made in China, says Steve Ettlinger, author of the book “Twinkie, Deconstructed.”
TRACING INGREDIENTS CAN BE COMPLICATED
David Leavitt, Interstate Bakeries’ vice president of snack marketing, said he wasn’t aware of any Twinkie ingredients made in China. But in a brief e-mail statement, he said Interstate was polling some of its smaller vendors to determine whether they obtain any products from China.
The complicated process of verification could eventually lead to a company like Ningbo Wanglong Group, the world’s largest maker of sorbic acid — a preservative made from natural gas that helps keep mold off baked goods and other products. The 14-year-old private company, located about 120 miles south of Shanghai, produces 1,000 tons of the white crystals every month. About one-third of that is exported to the U.S., said Li Ming, the company’s office director.
Li welcomed visitors to tour his company’s 80-acre campus, where he said 400 employees, many of them wearing white gloves and gray uniforms, work in 20 high-tech facilities. Seventy percent of workers have advanced degrees, he said proudly.
But for every additive maker like Ningbo Wanglong, scores of small operations compete in China, offering cut-rate goods in food industry journals, at trade fairs and on the Internet.
To make many ingredients, people need only basic knowledge of chemistry and simple equipment: a kettle, a scale and a dryer.
“The problem is that many small companies don’t register their products as food additives, thus avoiding supervision,” said He Jiguo, director of the food nutrition and safety department at China Agricultural University in Beijing. Instead, he said, these companies classify their goods as nonfood items. Many food additives also have industrial applications; citric acid, for example, is used to clean boilers and etch concrete floors.
He says Chinese government officials should boost enforcement and penalties.
“There is no clear food-classification system, no distinct definition for the range that the food includes, no related regulation about residues that additives leave on foods,” said a recent food-industry report. “All these bring loopholes for additives manufacturing and usage, give illegal traders opportunities and affects customers’ trust toward food additive safety.”
I read that as they want to put the additives in themselves, and cut out the middleman.
It’s been a long week...
‘bout time ping
I’ve been wondering about wheat cereals like Post shredded wheat and such. I called Post’s 800# yesterday after buying a large box at Costco and all the girl on the line would tell me was that the wheat did not come from China but wouldn’t say who the supplier was much less a country. When I asked if it was wheat from the states she just said she didn’t know.
Good. Now if only ALL of them would do so!
I’ve been leery of Tyson for the past few years. I bought a whole Tyson chicken with the intention of making chicken stew. To wrangle the frosty bird into my crockpot, I had to cut it up. It wasn’t long before my cuticles were stinging like I’d dipped my hands into bleach, though I noticed no peculiar odor.
I discarded the mess and returned a second carcass unopened to the store where I’d bought them. The manager gave no argument over refunding the full costs of both except to protest that it came from the processor that way. (This was shortly after the newsmagazine expose` of Food Lion grocery stores repackaging and selling meat of questionable freshness after washing the stuff in bleach/other chemicals.)
“China has become the world’s leading supplier of many food flavorings, vitamins and preservatives...”
“available in large quantities only from China.”
“...an increase of 150 percent from just two years earlier, according to Chinese industry estimates. It is now the predominant maker of vanilla flavoring, citric acid and varieties of Vitamin B such as thiamine, riboflavin and folic acid — nutrients commonly added to processed flour goods...”
Food, clothing and shelter.
Basic human needs.
So, if there’s a war, all they have to do is destroy our shelter......or items and energy for same.
I finally read an article that explained WHY they were putting melamine in dog and cat food. (I couldn’t figure it out - why would they do it?)
Here’s the answer - Melamine, while not similar to amino acids, has a lot of Nitrogens in the chemical formula like amino acid proteins. I think the molecule has around 7 nitrogens. When testers analyse the food for amino acids, to determine protein content, the tests we have now do it by determining nitrogen content.
So the food is considered to be high in protein, and instead has a molecule that not only the body can’t use, but is dangerous. It causes problems in kidneys.
The melamine content isn’t really a contaminant problem. It’s a FRAUD problem.
I think we may have just discovered the cause of cancer.
Good grief...what did we eat in the 1950s before China started messing with our food? No wonder our kids have every allergy in the book and are subject to high incidences of autism. It’s no telling what chemicals are in their food from toddlerhood on since the money-grubbing Chinese will mix anything into food additives to make a buck more profit. And of course, the free traitors in the USA wouldn’t like a rigorous inspection system that would have kept the poisonous puffer fish out of CA and IL last week that sickened dozens of diners. It was labeled “monk fish” by those fun-loving Chinese exporters.
I say NO MORE FOOD OR ANYTHING POISONOUS FROM CHINA!
Another reason buy fewer processed foods.
In other words, our infrastructure.
So much for being the Breadbasket of the World. Good American fields lie fallow or are sold to developers in favor of importing our comestables from a third world Superfund wasteheap.
It fakes the protein content, in other works it a sham, if you buy food based upon the protein content the tests will show positive if melamine is introduced, in effect less real protein.
China is poisoning us, our animals and our children, they know it and are getting away with murder, I blame a lot of it on the Clintons, Bill had his 8 years and as they planned 15 years ago Hitlery gets 8 years in the Whitehouse, and the saga of sawdust foods from China will continue. If they can wipe out a hundred million of us in 10 years quietly and slowly its all the more room for their illegal immigrants.
BTW the illegal immigrants from south of our border aren’t so dumb to eat chinese afflicted foods, corn and spices being their staple diet is actually quite healthy.
I say just sink the ships with their bogus crap, I have NEVER seen anything of high quality or workmanship from China. And this is a wakeup call to the big box stores like Walmart that rely heavily upon offshore goods they can sell for a high profit margin.
The pet poisonings occurred because both the importers and the manufacturers were cutting costs and buying cheap crap that was obviously questionable by any standard (bags of rice protein stencilled "Melamine" might have been a small clue) not because they were innocent victims of fraud.
If anything, the present Chinese experience with pet food proves that the Founding Fathers of the US were right: a certain amount of government is necessary to secure the blessings of liberty. Self Internet, when constrained by the law works to everyone’s benefit.
We now see what happens when a region has capitalism without sufficient government. Self interest runs until something checks it, and at the present time, there is not too much constraining of any activity as long as it generates sufficient money with which to grease palms.
Eating junk food like Twinkies is like smoking. If you want to put unnecessary crap into your body because it feels good then be aware that there are probably going to be unpleasant consequences.
I don’t buy any food anymore unless I can determine, as best as I can, where it came from.
Well, if people ate better, then they wouldn’t NEED to have vitamins added to enrich the “foods”. (as if Twinkies qualifies as food.)
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