If you read (or listen) to one food-related story this week, let this be it. The benefits of establishing and maintaining relationships with the people who grow, produce, and cook your food become crystal clear after you read this NPR story on polluted, contaminated, and potentially toxic imports finding their way into U.S. food products and markets.

Richard Knox singles out China because they are exporting unsafe food (and base ingredients) to the United States market and to United States food manufacturers. The scary part is this - even though the reject rate with China is far higher than other trade partners, one has to assume the likelihood of an increasing amount of these exports are making it into stores and food supply chains over time. Knox notes, "...in the past year, the FDA rejected more than twice as many food shipments from China as from all other countries combined."

One particularly disturbing passage cites a story told by an FDA staffer who visited a Chinese herbal tea factory,

"...to speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out...the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves."

Jean Halloran the director of food safety for Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports) pushes food companies here in the U.S. to take responsibility for the ingredients they are using in their products,

"...you have a responsibility to get on a plane and go over there, and see the plant where that's being manufactured, so that you can see for yourself whether there's a polluted water supply coming into the facility, whether lead-bearing paint chips might be falling into the vats of whatever you're purchasing."

More reasons to stay clear of processed foods. More reasons to get out and support your local farmers.

Links:

NPR: As Imports Increase, a Tense Dependence on China (read/listen to the article)

FDA import refusal report, by country (link)

Comments (1) | May 26 - 12:01 PM

category: News, Studies + Trends