Is this the first exposure to poisonous adulteration of animal and human food by cheap, dangerous additives or processing from China? Somehow, I think not!
Are you worried? You should be. The problem goes way beyond this event, and affects other countries’ lack of safety oversight, too.
The additive from China killing pets is now into the American human food supply via hogs and chickens. Time to do what should have been done decades ago — stop importing food from other countries, unless they can pass the strictest testing standards (and most European and Australia- New Zealand products can). They must also be a country which allows transparent oversight (which China will not) and is open to stricter guidelines for export to the USA. At least in the beginning of the current pet-food crisis, the Chinese refused to let the FDA come to inspect the food plant, even after the crisis surfaced. Is that OK?
And, on a definitely human-safety issue, please read about the Chinese Government’s lack of oversight on the adulterated manufacture and also piracy of prescription drug formulas being sold around the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/americas/06poison.html?hp
We do not need other countries to produce our food or our medicine!We should remember that we are capable of producing all the foods, with plenty of variety and choice, that our citizens need.
With all biomes and climes available to us, there’s little we can’t grow, especially when government “subsidies” get out of the picture and our farmers can grow fresh vegetables instead of the abusive excess of cotton, wheat, soy and corn we don’t need, but which ties up our acreage. We don’t need to buy broccoli from China or papayas from South America or Asia etc. or have our wheat sold back to us as processed wheat gluten from China (at a huge mark-up)!
We do need to support the family farm and discourage more acreage being sold to “agri-business” corporations, with corporate profit-at-any-cost mentality and patent disregard for the environment. (Multiply that in China a thousand-fold over US suppliers’ bad behavior.) See my previous article about helping family farms and ourselves at “Get Fresh With a Young Farmer!” in this blog’s Title Archive tab at the top of the page.
I have just been reading the perceptive, common-sense ideas for solutions from the public on a blog at the New York Times, and I would encourage you to read them too at:
http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/safeguarding-food-from-overseas/#comments
Really let the world know what you think, and post your comment here. We need to discuss this furiously and get solutions in place in America, NOW!
One of the NYT readers had already written a letter to favorite stores saying to stop buying fresh produce in China (in this case, broccoli). Another said every food label and fresh food should be marked with country of origin for ingredients (Whole Foods and some other good health stores already do this for fresh produce — that’s how I know what to buy and what not to buy, but the lack of information about origin on labels needs reforming).
Start waging war with your pen! You can do that, can’t you? Start an email campaign to your friends, if nothing else, and do more when you can to write legislators — state and federal — and support consumer groups like Science in the Public Interest.
We don’t “need” to buy fresh vegetables from China. It is just UNBELIEVABLE.
All of this is a tangled web that we need to unravel fast and get our food sovereignty back! Producing our own well-managed, well-inspected American food is not just a Health issue, but it is also a national security issue. What will be “slipped into ” our food overseas next time?
NO! I am not being paranoid. There’s enough of a track-record surfacing over many years, especially about Chinese goods (even Chinese made prescription drugs — they killed 88 children in Haiti, 365 people in Panama and on and on for thousands of deaths)(used medical gauze being put into silk comforters etc. — so it’s not just food items that there are problems with in China — apart from any worker abuse issues, too). Three of the last four fake medicine scourges originated in China, says the New York Times article linked above. And NYT states ” … And the deaths, if not intentional, are often no accident.” Other countries have bad track-records as well.
For about 40 years, I have been aware and ashamed that American companies would ship their “banned” for use in America insectides, fumigants etc, to “other” countries (especially in the Americas and Asia), so I had already severely limited my family’s access to these probably-tainted, overseas food sources, already.
However, last August, while I was by myself, I wanted quick “healthy” meals, so I broke my rule and purchased some frozen fish, processed in China. I will never do that again, after reading the comments on the NYT blog from Chinese-Americans with relatives in Hong Kong, and Americans living and working in China now. It was a real eye-opener, even for someone who follows these “issues”.
If I have any of that fish left, shamefully I am throwing it out. I hate to waste food — but it is the only way I can protect my family. At the time, I was upset that American companies were using Chinese processors, but now my anger reaches much further.
The American food processors need to have a severe fine structure imposed by the US government, if they do not do the research in food technology and assay any materials for purity, if purchased overseas. And, the processors should be exposed to potential litigation from any infringements which result in illness or deaths. This is if you want to eat “processed” food, anyway.
The safest route out of this mess — best for you and the planet — is to eat fresh, real food which is locally grown. Period. And, learn to cook!
Even for a busy family, there’s always time to cook. It is just a matter of “how”.
___ Use crockpots for mostly hands-off cooking. I use Rival computerized ones.
___ Use steaming and stir-fry which will be healthier and faster than getting take-out and you’ll know exactly what is in your food! I use Sunbeam steamers and Maxim electrical woks on medium temperatures and a real carbon steel wok for real stir-fry results.
___ Make soups. All the nutrition stays right in the pot, and they can be eaten in any season — hot or cold, cooked or raw (like Gazpacho or fruit soups). I use my large Revere Ware stainless steel stockpots or my crockpots.
___ Eat lots of salads and make your own dressings (it’s really fast and easy and beats a $3 – $4 bottle of indescribable additives). (I have a just-the-right-size, keep in the bottle, Black and Decker Gizmo electrical gadget for whirling home-made dressings.)
Learn more about eating a raw vegetarian diet for a larger percentage of your meals. It really helps diabetes.
___ Learn to pre-cook basic ingredients and freeze for instant prep — chop batches of onions, grate cheese and package these in usable batches, pre-cook ground meats or cook and slice meat for later additions to recipes.
___ Learn to cook once or twice a month. This requires learning a technique that is very easy and it is possible to make a month’s worth of main meals over about 4 days of shopping and kitchen prep. Get the ingredients shopped for and sorted and use the 2 week-end days to cook. My kids do this all the time, with 2 kids in the house and 2 full-time jobs. So, I do know this works.
___ Note, you will not see “Microwave” listed as an option on my lists. There are many safety reasons for that. I won’t discuss them this time.
___ You can learn to use a pressure cooker, too. My father was doing this 50 – 60 years ago, after he and my Mum would pick us up from school, when they had their own business, and we had a timely, excellent, home-cooked meal every night. (He was a great cook.) Cooking should be a family effort. It goes much faster that way.
I own 4 pressure cookers: 1 giant, wonderful Mirro aluminum one (it’s the only aluminum “pot” I own, but I don’t do such large batch-cooking often, and more to the point it has an extremely safe, fool-proof pressure gauge. The others I have are Presto stainless steel ones, which use a different pressure gauge mechanism. There’s a link for a beautiful Swiss option — which I may take a closer look at, as it may meet my empty-nest options better, now.
___ For those into more pre-cooking which saves lots of time later — consider blanching and freezing vegetables etc. or using an automatic dehydrating machine (learn the safety techniques) or Vacuum-packing system (same caveat). Dehydrating food is also a useful civil-defense action for emergencies – weather or societal. I have an Excalibur vacuum system (it seems not to be being made now, but they make excellent dehydrators, too) and a FoodSaver (R) system, and a Harvest Maid dehydrator (with a tower of extra trays and sheets — they’ve been bought by an Aussie company now, but may still be on the US market).
If you don’t act, you’ll get what you deserve. All we can do is try to change the system, and if enough of us get onboard, and persist, we may just manage some Progress this time — for the lasting benefit for all of us and future generations. It’s a worthy goal. Start now.
Best to all — Em
References:
http://www.foodrevolution.org/bio.htm
http://earthsave.org/
Episodes 23 and 34, especially on the podcast at:
http://rawveganradio.podomatic.com/
http://members.aol.com/oamcloop/
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/advice/20000131a.asp
http://www.realfood4realpeople.com/oamc.html
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/work_at_home_parents/7645
http://www.kuhnrikon.com/products/pressure_cookers/index.html
http://homecooking.about.com/od/appliancecookery/a/choosepressure.htm
http://www.gopresto.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirro
http://www.cabelas.com/ssubcat-1/cat602108.shtml
http://www.hillmark.com.au/products/tips_and_faqs/ezidri_tips_and_faqs
http://www.blackanddeckerappliances.com/product-238.html
http://www.sunbeam.com.au/products/product.cfm?sec_id=9
http://www.esalton.com/control/product/~category_id=C20014/~product_id=EW70A
http://www.crockpot.com/
http://www.revereware.com/
http://www.cspinet.org/
(c)2007 Em https://diabetesdietdialogue.wordpress.com
If you want to use or quote from my article, please use the complete copyright citation and include my website, please. Thanks!
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