US store chain cuts sales of food from China

Yahoo News ^ | Feb 12, 08 | Staff

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US grocery chain Trader Joe's said Monday it would stop selling food imported from China due to customers' concerns about the products' safety.

"Our customers have voiced concerns about products from this region and we have listened," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said in a statement.

"All single ingredient food items sourced from mainland China are scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1," she said.

"We will continue to source products from other regions until our customers feel as confident as we do about the quality and safety of Chinese products."

[WestCoastGal]

My local health food store promotes Blue Bonnett as well.

That’s about the only vitamins I take.

[modest proposal]

don’t knock whole foods!

At least they put some thought into the healthiness of their products.

[FR Class of 1998]

Uh... you do know that ‘organic’ food is a scam, yes? It costs more and carries more health risks than the regular stuff. You can get perfectly healthy products at any grocery as long as you don’t buy junk.

[modest proposal]

I don’t think organic food is a scam. How is selling people meat that has not been jumped up on hormone injections and antibiotics in the feed a scam?

or selling crackers without 10,000 preservatives. how is that a scam?

And what are the health risks of organic food?

[FR Class of 1998]

Organic food is food grown without modern pesticides. Like the DDT fiasco, this attempt to eliminate the synthetic chemicals in the process simply allows natural parasites and bacteria to flourish in their absence. So when you buy ‘organic’, you are buying food that carries a significantly higher risk of making you sick, in some potentially serious ways.

[modest proposal]

oh, I have never heard of organic food making anyone sick. I assume if it did it would be all over the news?

but yeah i agree the normal grocery stores can be healthy too if you watch what you buy. however i still am drawn in by the concept of organic foods; i think, as a nation, we went overboard with overly processing our food (pop tarts for example) and shopping in an organic section makes it easier to avoid highly processed foods.

[FR Class of 1998]

I’m sure you know enough about the news industry at this point to know they are highly selective about what to report, and particularly hesitant to report things that shatter popular lefty illusions (see Global Warming).

[Doohickey]

It’s turning into more of an ethanol basket now that the government has ordered us to burn food in our gas tanks.

[modest proposal]

so do you have any links to incidents where people died or became unusually seriously ill eating organic food?

otherwise i am afraid i will have to think there is no proof its any worse than regular food

[FR Class of 1998]

I can’t claim any authority on the matter, I just studied enough to be convinced that it was just another lefty feel-good fad and lost interest there.

This looks like a decent place to start though, if you’re interested in learning more.

http://www.thetruthaboutorganicfoods.org/

[modest proposal]

well think of it this way: what is more nutritional a loaf of sunbeam pure white bread or a loaf of bread made with whole grains?

did you know that many commercial chickens are often fed a meal of ground up chicken feathers? Its information like this that makes consumers want to buy organic grain fed chicken. i don’t think its just a lefty thing although they sometimes take it too far by saying no one can raise chickens in a way that makes the chickens unhappy which is irritating.

also the mad cow disease (BSE) was caused by farmers feeding cows the remains of other cows.

I do believe that some foods are healthier than others and organic stores emphasize these choices more than regular stores do. so its a bandwagon i think has some value.

[eleni121]

It is time for people to batten down the hatches and start spending less and spending on products that come from nations that are non Commie and non Muslims and non Muslim friendly.

Pay down debt and start a movement against the establishment. And the establishment includes the Demoratic Party and elements of the GOP.

For now it’s HUCKABEE as the only candidate I would support in this year’s elections.

Either him or no one.

[Red_Devil 232]

And we have back yards. There is a Weekly Gardening thread here on FR. Check it out when the politics gets to be to much to take!

[Digital Sniper]

US grocery chain Trader Joe's said Monday it would stop selling food imported from China due to customers' concerns about the products' safety.

Thank God. I hope more stores follow TJ's example.

[Digital Sniper]

Isn’t Trader Joe’s frequented exclusively by metrosexual hippie elitists?

I think you have TJ's confused with Wild Oats and Whole Foods.

[JamesA]

Good for them, If Walmart did that they would go under.

[windcliff]

ping

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"You are getting schwanzed."

Not necessarily. I do look at the pricetags and thereby eschew the schwanzing most of the time. Sometimes their stuff is an outright bargain, believe it or not. They've had six-packs of Lagunitas IPA for two bucks less than Safeway, for example, and just had a special on Rocky chickens for something like $.95 a pound. And, as I recounted elsewhere on this thread, their ground lamb is made from the good stuff. I had some guests over for dinner and, on a lark, decided to make my world-famous lamb balls in two batches, using Whole Foods ground lamb for one batch and ground lamb from a gourmet grocery for the other. The WF lamb hardly shrank at all; the other store's lamb withered up and produced gobs of grease. In this and other respects there is a definite high-quality aspect to WF's wares.

[Captainpaintball]

America still has a breadbasket.

No it doesn't .

[Sawdring]

At the local Walmart they just stop selling the Kids BagOGlass from China.