Tainted imports, what better reason to buy local

By: James Burge

Update: More info here: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/465.html

 

I wanted to take a moment to blog again about the story I posted yesterday about the allegedly tainted food products imported to North America from Chinese manufacturers. I admit it was slightly alarmist and I’m not sure that angle is very effective, so I will attempt, with a more level head, to address these concerns again.

 

Let’s start with what we know.

 

We know that in recent years many tainted food scandals have affected consumers in this country, the most notable being the Listeria outbreak that continues to get attention (and rightfully so). Other notable cases include the recent tomato and spinach salmonella outbreaks and the dog food recall back in March of this year which caused kidney and liver failure in pets. What didn’t really make headlines was the cause of the kidney and liver failure. Most articles attribute the recall to tainted wheat gluten. But what was the wheat gluten tainted with??? The answer is Melamine.

 

Melamine is a toxic chemical used in fertilizers and thermosetting plastics.

Ingestion of Melamine may lead to reproductive damage, or bladder or kidney stones, which can lead to bladder cancer.^{[15][20][21][22][23]}

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine#Chronic_toxicity

 

(the one that I find most interesting is the reproductive damage coupled with the high risk to infants, but that’s another story altogether)

 

We know about reported cases of Melamine-contaminated powdered infant formula from China.

 

Over 6240 cases of kidney stones in infants with three deaths have been reported from across China as of 17 September [2008]. Kidney stones in infants are very rare.

Source: http://www.who.int/csr/don/2008_09_19/en/index.html

 

One of China’s biggest dairy producers received consumer complaints about its baby milk formula as early as December 2007.

 

Earlier this month, government investigators said that Sanlu officials had delayed acting on consumer complaints and warnings in June, and that local government officials in Hebei knew of the problems in early August, just before the Olympic Games opened in Beijing.

Food safety experts say the delays may have allowed the tainted powdered milk supplies to spread more widely, making tens of thousands of children ill.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/world/asia/24milk.html

 

Lastly, we know that the instance of kidney stones in American children is on the rise. Once considered a middle age ailment, more and more young children are developing kidney stones. This rise is attributed to excess salt in ones diet along with the instance of obesity.

 

Now lets talk a bit about what we don’t know.

We don’t know the amount of contaminated products have been imported into North America, but since the Chinese government was trying to save face while the world was watching, products continued to be imported to North America and may still be on store shelves.

 

We don’t know, what the Canadian (or US for that matter) government is doing about concerns regarding food imports. Although the Canadian Government is trying to change laws that would require a clarification if products from other countries were used in manufacturing, it may be a case of to little to late.

 

[U]nder current Canadian law, if 51 per cent of the production costs were incurred in Canada and the last substantial transformation of the product occurred in Canada, it is legal to use those labels.

 

The made-in-Canada label will mean the product was manufactured or processed in Canada. While such a product can include non-Canadian contents, the label must make it clear by specifying it was made in Canada with imported ingredients.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/21/food-label.html

Update:  We now know what the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is doing about the Melamine contamination:

 

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is advising all importers of food products from China containing milk or milk-derived ingredients that the Agency will require documentation demonstrating certain safety and compliance for these products. 

 Source: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/concen/2008melinfoe.shtml

We also now know which products have tested positive for high levels of Melamine. A list can be found here. 

 

What we still don’t know is which products have been tested and found to be safe. I know that this may be asking a lot because there is no way to test everything that is currently on shelves in stores.  But countries like Korea have removed the following:

 

M&M milk chocolates, Snickers peanut fun size bars, Kit Kat bars from Nestle, and Ritz “sandwich cracker cheese and rice cookies”

Source: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/463.html 

 

The above mentioned are North American Brand Name candy bars, and the Snickers specifically says the fun size bars, I am assuming this means the small bite size bars usually given out at Halloween. Since the milk power itself was imported to the US, there is a chance that even American brand name chocolate bars could be contaminated, and need to be tested (although it would be easier just to find out who imported milk powder from China (after Dec 2007) and which batches it was used it, this information is likely already known in the US, but has not been released)

 

We don’t know why the media hasn’t been mentioning the risks to candy, ESPECIALLY since (as I’m writing this), it is Halloween.  In 24h the damage will already have been done. 

 

 

We don’t know the scope of the contamination. Most of the stories have highlighted milk powder or whey, but includes products like chocolate, cookies, cakes, and even things like packaged macaroni and cheese. While some of the recalled candy doesn’t even contain milk powder as one of the ingredients. Egg powder is also being identified as a potential source of this contamination.

 

A recall was issued for foil-wrapped Pirate’s Gold chocolate coins because they contain melamine.

Source: http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/coins.asp

 

We don’t know how much, if any of the candy currently in stores for sale for Halloween has been tested, and therefore we don’t know what candy to avoid. This will put an unfortunate damper on Halloween this year.

 

So what can we do?

We can do our best to limit or eliminate any Chinese made products that may contain milk, milk powder, egg powder, whey. (although this is easier said than done)

 

We can pressure government officials to step-up testing of products which are imported to this country and could contain chemical additives (whether deliberate or accidental) deemed harmful.

 

We can educate everyone we know on the risks, and we can hope that we don’t see that kind of kidney damage in children before we act.

 

We can buy local food, and try, whenever possible, to stay away from pre-packaged manufactured food and candy. Only by refusing to buy potentially unsafe products will testing become standard in order to ease the public’s concerns.

 

For some more information, Brass Check TV has compiled some videos here: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/462.htm