Exploding Watermelons and Pork That Glows In The Dark

Four years ago, the New York Times published an article titled "Fake goods and unsafe food threaten Chinese exports" after thousands of dogs and cats in the USA became ill or died from melamine in pet food imported from China. The Washington Post declared "For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry." ("Tainted Chinese Imports Common") The problems with imported Chinese food was outlined by the US Department of Agriculture :
1. unsafe veterinary drug residue in farm-raised shrimp and fish
2. unsafe processing and handling,with the most common problems cited by FDA being “filth, unsafe additives, inadequate labeling, and lack of proper manufacturer registrations"
3. lack of oversight, since most of China's 200 million farms and food companies are not certified
("Imports From China and Food Safety Issues")

Besides the pet food contamination, problems in China's food supply have included 300,000 children
sickened with kidney ailments after consuming infant formula adulterated with melamine, an industrial chemical added to raw milk to raise its apparent protein content, use of toxic dye in duck feed, chili sauce, and other foods, use of industrial bleach to whiten noodles, carcinogenic drugs in fish and shrimp, poisoning from steroids used in pork production, illegal dyes in foods, insect filth in bean curd, filth from insects and animals in dried mushrooms and garlic and fluoroquinolone and chloramphenicol (known carcinogens) in honey, and heightened levels of lead and cadmium from contaminated soils in the Pearl River Delta region of southern China. This matters to the US because we are importing more and more cheap food from China. The majority of our apple juice, garlic, canned mandarin oranges, fish, and shrimp come from them.

I visited China in 1987, when people were still wearing Mao jackets and farming the land by hand. From our tour bus, we could see into the mud huts where farmers lived and see them in the fields shouldering the plow since they were too poor to even have an animal to pull it. Their economy has grown by more than 90x its size since then. But farmers are still struggling to make a living, making about $900 a year vs. city workers making $2,965 a year.

In a land where rural life has been difficult, imagine!, between 20-43 million Chinese died of starvation in the 1950s, the financial incentive to cut corners or add toxic additives that can increase the value of product--like adding melamine to add weight and apparent protein to milk--is seductive for the struggling peasant class. I guess when a farmer is scrabbling to get by,  a cheap additive like clenbuterol  to make their pigs leaner and bring a better price is hard for them to resist--especially when it may take years for a human to feel the effects of the drug on their respiratory system.  Add to this endemic corruption and widespread environmental pollution, with a real environmental disaster of unclean water and heavy metals in the soils from industrial smokestacks belching smoke that is not regulated, and it not surprising that the Chinese people are getting angry. So angry, in fact, that some protesters have even set fire to themselves.

Some unexpected results of unregulated chemical additions to food have been  exploding watermelons (see video) and pork that glows in the dark! (www.Chinasmack.com)

China's response to these problems have been typically heavy-handed but mostly symbolic. 57 out of an estimated 10 million government officials were sanctioned for taking bribes related to food safety issues. The city of Chongqing approved the death penalty for "primary culprits, recidivists and criminals who cause serious health hazards or get a huge amount of illegal profit", though the real aim of the provision seems to be the Mafia-style gangs called "black societies".


Another of China's solutions to the problem of food contamination has been organic food grown behind guarded gates for the rich and political elite.  According to the LA Times story, "their limited supply is sent to Communist Party officials, dining halls reserved for top athletes, foreign diplomats, and others in the elite classes. The general public, meanwhile, dines on foods that are increasingly tainted or less than healthful — meats laced with steroids, fish from ponds spiked with hormones to increase growth, milk containing dangerous additives such as melamine".


Here in the US, we are mostly complacent. We have no laws mandating disclosure of the food source if it is repackaged here or added to other ingredients. So, if powdered milk with melamine is imported into the US to be make into brownie mix--guess what? You won't know. "The FDA inspects less than 1 percent of food shipments destined for the United States, and it performs laboratory examinations on
an even smaller percentage of shipments." ("A Decade Of Dangerous Food Imports From China") .

My solution? Buy local organic foods whenever possible, in season (because out-of-season produce is sure to be imported) and as unprocessed as possible. Make your own baked goods from ingredients you know are made in the US--it will be better for your health, better for US jobs, better for your community--since revenue goes to your neighborhood farms and ranchers. Farmer's markets are great sources for fresh, clean food--and--you can grow your own food in gardens, pots and even in old tires on your driveway!