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I received the following email from a trusted friend, Sol Sanders, who’s a longtime Asia correspondent. The information in the email is also consistent with what I’ve researched on the net. “USDA approves import of chicken processed in China despite safety concerns” has a list of Chinese food safety incidents which reads like a horror story. I’ve long stopped buying any foods — produce, frozen seafood, canned — from China. After reading this email, I will also stop buying any foods, esp. seafood, imported from S.E. Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia because, as I had suspected, they’re...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A chemical used in explosives, fireworks and rocket fuel has been found in powdered baby formula in the United States, the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG) said. In "little-noticed findings," researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 15 brands of baby formula contained perchlorate, an oxidizer in solid fuels used in explosives, fireworks, road flares and rocket motors, the EWG said. "Studies have established that the chemical is a potent thyroid toxin that may interfere with fetal and infant brain development," it said. The EWG said the CDC study's findings raised...

(KUNMING) -- China will export coffee directly to the United States in April, according to a deal signed between the ECUM Coffee Group and Yunnan Hogood Co. Ltd.. In a statement Saturday, Hogood said it will export 240 tonnes of coffee beans per month to Atlantic (USA) Inc., a member of the Denmark-based ECUM Coffee Group. Before this deal, Chinese coffee reached foreign consumers via international coffee suppliers, such as Nescafe and Starbucks. Jon H. Stefenson, director of marketing at the ECUM U.S. subsidiary, said packages of the company's coffee products will carry marks indicating the plantation origin as Yunnan....

Milk and yogurt from two Chinese stores in Italy tested positive for the chemical melamine, a government official announced Thursday. Welfare Undersecretary Francesca Martini said that health police have been seizing and testing dairy products imported from China, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. So far, problems have been found with three cases of dairy products. Cosimo Piccinno, commander of the health police, said that the levels of melamine found were above the acceptable limit and that he was concerned because the products are likely to be eaten by children. ''These aren't lethal quantities, but they are harmful,'' Piccinno said....

In China, tasteless and colorless melamine has been part of the food chain for a long time. Its addition to SanluÂ’s milk powder has now created a global panic over contaminated Chinese foodstuffs. And this was not the first time. In May last year, companies in ChinaÂ’s Jiangsu and Shandong provinces added melamine to wheat protein and barley protein powder, which caused thousands of pets in the US, Canada and other countries to fall ill or die. More than 60 million pet food products were recalled. Feed for 20 million chickens, hundreds of thousands of cultivated fish and thousands of...

Family wins $40,000 over food tainted with urine by North Platte Bulletin Staff - 7/14/2008 A police officer from Sidney and his family won $40,000 from a restaurant that served them food tainted with an employee’s spit and urine. Officer Keith Andrew and his wife said in the lawsuit that a Taco Bell employee urinated and spit in food served to them and their children in October 2005. The owner of the restaurant is North Platte’s Mid-Plains Food and Lodging, owner of a KFC and Taco Bell here too. The jury sided with the Andrews July 11. In the lawsuit,...

ISE, Japan, Oct. 26 — It was supposed to be a celebratory year for Akafuku, a confectioner that had been selling bean-jam sweets here since 1707. On its 300th anniversary, its top-selling sweets were still indispensable gifts to bring back home or to the office after a trip to Ise Shrine here, Japan's holiest religious site. Instead, Akafuku has become the latest Japanese food company to be exposed for lying about the contents of its products, tampering with expiration-date labels and recycling ingredients. For only the second time in its history, Akafuku, which was forced to halt production during World...

Recent scares have raised concerns about the safety of food products sold in supermarkets. But ingredient suppliers say brand-name food producers enforce strict safety standards. From pet food deliberately adulterated with melamine, to contaminated toothpaste and seafood with drug residues, a number of recent scares have raised questions about the safety of food imported from China and other parts of the world. So how much can Americans trust our food supply? Consider one of those frozen prepared meals found in a supermarket freezer — for example, Weight Watchers' ravioli florentine. The box bears a long list of ingredients: wheat,...

ASSOCIATED PRESS - MEXICO CITY — Mexican cantaloupe irrigated with water from sewage-tainted rivers. Candy laced with lead. Chinese toothpaste is not the only concern for U.S. consumers wary of the health risks posed by imported goods. Producers in other developing nations are notorious violators of basic food-safety standards, even as they woo consumers with a growing appetite for foods such as pickled mangoes from India and fruits and vegetables during winter from Mexico. On Wednesday, President Bush established a high-level government panel to recommend steps to guarantee the safety of food shipped into the U.S. and to improve policing...

Millions of young fish being raised in Alaska's vast network of salmon hatcheries were fed food contaminated with melamine, the same substance that has triggered a massive recall of pet food following the deaths of cats and dogs.

People have eaten millions of chickens that were given feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal officials said Tuesday, though they said the threat to human health is minimal. The announcement came after an investigation of chicken farms in Indiana found that 38 of the facilities had given contaminated feed to poultry raised for human consumption, and that 2.5 million to 3 million people ate them. The officials added that they expect to discover that chickens on possibly hundreds of farms in other states were also given tainted feed.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican officials have impounded 59 tons of dried dairy products imported from the United States to see if any of them came from a Texas company accused of distributing contaminated baby formula, this country's Health Secretary said Friday. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has accused El Paso-based Milky Way Traders Inc. of shipping milk products meant only for animals into Mexico as baby formula safe for humans. On Monday, his office obtained a restraining order halting the company from distributing its products south of the border, but Mexico fears some may already have made their way here....

A former night-shift cook at the Denny's restaurant on Illinois Route 3 in Waterloo has been charged with aggravated battery after being accused of contaminating food and watching customers eat it, authorities said Thursday. Police said that Anthony J. Lindhorst, 26, of Waterloo, deliberately contaminated food on at least two occasions by putting his semen into the honey-mustard dressing that the restaurant serves with its chicken strips, said Capt. Suzanne Sweet of the Waterloo police. The incidents occurred in November and April, police said.

<p>Mexico -- It's a lazy Sunday in this border town southeast of San Diego and locals are gawking at classic cars lined up outside a popular bullfighting plaza.</p> <p>The talk of the town is who's running for mayor next year and typical Sunday fare: where to eat, where to shop and how a loved one is doing at the hospital.</p>