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Posted on 02/10/2008 5:41:23 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Dumping Debacle Spreads Fear over Chinese Food
FEBRUARY 11, 2008 03:08
The debacle over pesticide-laced Chinese dumplings found in Japan has spread worry over the safety of Chinese food products, and promoted American and Japanese authorities to take preventive measures.
The New York Times says U.S. athletes for the Beijing Summer Olympics will have their meals shipped from their own country. The U.S. Olympic Committee has signed contracts with major American food makers like Kellogg and Tyson Foods to deliver 25,000 pounds of meat and other foodstuffs to China two months before the opening ceremony.
The committee will also make separate arrangements with Chinese suppliers to secure other foods.
Last year, caterers from the committee went to China to check the safety of the food there. A piece of chicken available at a supermarket was found to have a dangerously high level of steroids.
In addition to the committee’s findings, a series of food safety crises in recent years prompted the decision to give American athletes U.S.-made food. The food will be served at a separate facility for the more than 600 members of Team USA.
Chinese food is also under fire in Japan, with fear over their safety rapidly rising. The major Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun surveyed 100 shoppers in supermarkets or department stores Thursday and Friday. Ninety-seven percent of them said they are “uneasy about food from China.”
The dumpling incident has halved the number of customers buying food products in Chinatown in Yokohama, which attracts hordes of tourists with its mass of Chinese restaurants.
Food chains in Japan are also posting signs saying “China-free.”
Skylark has stopped using processed food from China, and J. Front Retailing, a major Japanese distributor with large department stores such as Daimaru and Matsuzaka, will pull vegetables and frozen food imported from China from shelves.
The city of Unzen in Nagasaki Prefecture has banned processed Chinese food in all of its four school cafeterias.
It is not from any officials, but somebody made such a comment attached to an article on the subject. To me, that seems more plausible than deliberate sabotage, whose possibility was raised previously.
Ping!
Should that not be "Dumpling", rather than "Dumping"?
Or I have missed something?
Right. It’s gyoza “dumplings” or pot-stickers.
That’s a possibility, Tiger, but the more I think about it, the more I am of the opinion that it was probably the work of an unofficial sub-contractor hired by a greedy plant manager.
They did a pretty impressive overview of the plant where the gyoza came from on one of the Japanese television stations. The sanitation procedures for the workers were impressive, the plant itself was immaculate, the process efficient from start to finish — all of which is expensive as hell.
Now if I was a greedy unscrupulous plant manager and I was tasked with delivering say 1,000 metric tons of gyoza in a certain month at $1,500 per ton and I had made a deal with an el-cheapo plant across town for five tons at $500 per ton, I could arrange to sneak those into the packaging line during an off shift.
It would take the connivance of some other staffers, but they are greedy too (this is China we’re talking about) and walk away with a healthy profit.
And of course the unofficial subcontractor has none of the impressive (and expensive) sanitation measures, quality ingredients, etc.
I know that scams like this exist because they have been exposed before. In fact, I would be willing to bet money that it happens and goes undetected quite often, because in most cases the subcontractor is careful enough to make the product good enough to pass casual inspection and the plant manager knows damn well that only a small portion of any shipment is actually subjected to thorough testing.
The only reason they got caught this time is because people actually got sick. If the pesticide dosage had been slightly less, no one would have been the wiser.
In any case, it just reinforces my decision not to buy anything from China if I can help it at all. Taiwanese products are fine.
Still unofficial subcontracting is also a highly possible scenario.
How did you know they were from China. I don't believe that country of origin is required on food labels.
Heh...
When have the Chinese ever admitted to doing ANYTHING wrong?
The entire nation is composed of spoiled brats who think they have a divine right to anything they want — and they just can’t understand why the rest of the world doesn’t accept that.
“The New York Times says U.S. athletes for the Beijing Summer Olympics will have their meals shipped from their own country. The U.S. Olympic Committee has signed contracts with major American food makers like Kellogg and Tyson Foods to deliver 25,000 pounds of meat and other foodstuffs to China two months before the opening ceremony.”
Hmm so the food is not good enough for our olympians but its good enough for our supermarket shelves..
I have a “dumping problem” every time I eat Chinese food!
Can’t believe I was the first to get that line posted lol!
Kellog I am not sure about; but Tyson Foods????????
We live in Japan ...and won’t buy ANY food from China .
“I don’t believe that country of origin is required”
Maybe I’m naive, but many of the grocery stores are labeling seafood as to country of origin and I do tend to buy according to the labels.
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