Don’t Eat That Stuff, Charlie. It’s …Who Knows?

China has announced the creation of an Olympic Food Safety Command Center to protect visitors to the Beijung Olympics this August.

The idea behind the OFSCC is to ensure that terrorists don’t contaminate China’s food supplies. Say what? That’s already being done for them by the Chinese food industry. From the Associated Press:

“… food supplied for the Olympics will be checked against specific technical standards.

“Precautions must be taken to avert any trace of terrorist attacks on our food supply chain,” [state news agency] Xinhua quoted Zhang Shikuan [head of the Beijing Industry and Commerce Bureau] as saying.

Problems in China’s food supply are common, due to lax standards and improper use of chemicals, preservatives or drugs.

Such concerns were heightened last year after some Chinese food exports, such as seafood, were found to be contaminated with dangerous chemicals.”

 

It’s Not Just China’s Toys or Its Water or Its Air That’s Poisonous

China may be poised to become the world’s biggest economy but it’s being hammered by environmental threats along the way. Combined, these threats may well be enough to derail China’s economic miracle.

Well known by now are China’s severe problems with water supply and quality, it’s horribly polluted air, and all the problems detected in its exports. Now, according to Spiegel Online, word is getting out about China’s poisonous food supply:

Chinese journalist Zhou Qing, a critic of the regime, unearthed political dynamite in his two-year investigation of China’s food industry. He interviewed grocers, restaurant owners, farmers and food factory managers for an exposé for which he won a prize as part of the German “Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage” in 2006.

His book is a dark account of a ruthless food mafia that stops at nothing to maximize its profits, for example by using contraceptives to accelerate the growth of fish stocks, lengthening the shelf-life of cucumbers with highly toxic pesticide DDT, using hormones and poisoned salt in food production and putting absurd amounts of antibiotics in meat.

Zhou said uncontrolled greed had caused a food disaster of unimaginable proportions. “I can only warn you never to go in a restaurant.” The danger of food producers being taken to task for their actions is slight. Everything disappears in China’s endless bureaucracy, he said.

Zhou’s claims may sound exaggerated, but they’re borne out by recent developments. In early December the Shanghai city council slapped an export ban on products made by the Shanghai Mellin Food Company after cancer-causing substances were found in its pork products.
In July the former director of the state food and drug supervisory authority, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed after being convicted of taking bribes to award licences for forged drugs, some of which had lethal side effects.

The children are the biggest sufferers, said Zhou. Poisoned baby food has led to severe diseases and physical deformities. Zhou writes that 200,000 to 400,000 people fall victim to poisoned food each year. A third of cancer cases, which are increasing at double-digit rates, can be attributed to food, he writes.

“Ordinary people don’t know about it. If the people knew about it there would be a revolution. The wrath of the people would be unstoppable.”

For thousands of years the power of China’s rulers hinged on their ability to feed the people. “Revolutions aren’t caused by political differences, they’re caused by a lack of bread.”