Poisoning the World

China probes 'fake seasoning' producing hub near Tianjin. The products were labelled with brands including Maggi, Knorr, and Nestle.
BBC News
The factories were using unapproved ingredients like industrial salt in seasonings including soy sauce and vinegar.

Chinese authorities are investigating nearly 50 factories manufacturing fake versions of widely used food seasonings and sauces.
It comes after Beijing News reportedly uncovered the elaborate operation near the city of Tianjin.
The factories were using unapproved ingredients like industrial salt in seasonings including soy sauce and vinegar, the paper said.
The products were labelled with brands including Maggi, Knorr, and Nestle.
The seasonings, which include spices and chicken stock, are commonly used in Chinese cooking and can be widely found across Asia.
China has been rocked by various food scandals in recent years, with tainted milk powder killing six babies in 2008 and making more than 300,000 children ill.

Unhygienic conditions
The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) said in a statement on Monday evening that it had dispatched officers to Tianjin to investigate the claims.
The Beijing News report said a "fake food seasoning manufacturing hub" had grown unchecked for more than 10 years in the town of Duliu near Tianjin.
Nearly 50 small factories, operating in a residential area, had been churning out fake seasoning estimated to be worth up to a 100m yuan ($14.5m, £12m) per year.
Reporters and local police visited the factories last week, acting on a tip-off from a whistleblower.
Pictures and video taken at the scene show workers making and packaging the products in dirty sheds using homemade equipment like plastic drums and garden hoses.
The factories were said to have used industrial grade salt unsafe for human consumption. 

They also recycled by-products from other food manufacturers, and were seen freely using highly regulated ingredients like the artificial sweetener cyclamate.

'Thoroughly rectify'
Beijing News quoted Nestle's China office as saying that its anti-counterfeit team was looking into the matter, and that "product experts will be helping law enforcement representatives in identifying suspicious products".
Chinese food brands such as Totole and Donggu, whose products were also faked, said they were either assisting investigations or conducting their own probes.
Totole added that it had known about the factories since 2007, and its anti-counterfeit team had conducted numerous crackdowns in Duliu, but had been unable to completely stamp them out.
The sheer scale of the operation revealed in local media shocked a country that is no stranger to food scandals, prompting questions online.
"Shouldn't the CFDA be the one that is punished? A whole village has been faking products for so many years. Can we still trust this department?" said one commenter on the CFDA's Weibo page.
"How many people have been poisoned by these fake products? Seasoning impacts so many lives, this is no game!" said another user.
The Food and Drug Administration said in its statement that it would "thoroughly rectify the problem of fake food seasoning production, and present the results of our investigation to the public in a timely fashion".
In 2014, the Shanghai Husi Food Company, a meat supplier to fast food chains McDonalds and KFC in China, was found to be repackaging old meat.
The following year authorities seized 100,000 tonnes of smuggled meat, some of it more than 40 years old.
Last month Chinese media reported that food suppliers in the north-western city of Shanxi were treating mushrooms with hazardous chemicals to make them look whiter and fresher.

Poisoning the World

“Organic” Food from China Highly Contaminated

As people get informed about how important the organic food is so does the world’s demand of such products. 

Only in the USA, every year organic food sales increase at least by 20%. 

The domestic supplies could not satisfy such enormous demand so in order to keep the market in stock, the vendors should look internationally.
A great part of the imports come from the European Union, but their organic standards differ from those in America. 

Also, a significant part of them are from China, which provides low quality and low food safety standards.

Much of the organic production that comes from China is unsafe, even the Chinese farmers won’t consume it themselves. 

Then, what’s the point of organic food if it is not safe?
This implies that some of the food labelled as “organic” was never intended to be organic. 

It was simply a result of the substandard Chinese production. 

The US Customs tends to reject entire imports of food from China because of the presence of dangerous additives, drug residues, poor hygiene and mislabeling. 

In order, not to be rejected, the Chinese exporters labelled their products as organic, especially the unusual and dirty ones.
The Chinese government hasn’t established a system of labelling the truly organic products and those that are not. 

So, the result is a complete mislabeling of the food by the Chinese producers.
Even the “truly organic” food from China is in fact produced in totally contaminated conditions, that people could not handle. 

Most of the Chinese agricultural lands are located along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the most polluted rivers in China.
Their pollution is a result of the thousands of factories that are located along these rivers, which infuse their chemicals into the water that in fact irrigate the crops. 

Once, a chemical fertilizer discarded so much ammonia into the Fu river, a tributary of the Yangtze river that immediately killed 110 tons of fish. 

However, this river was still used for agricultural and industrial purposes.
These rivers are also loaded with great amounts of many heavy metals and harmful chemicals as well as the food irrigated with this water. 

The Chinese sewage, bottled drinking water, rice and milk have indicated the presence of perchlorate, the precursor of rocket fuel. 

So, how such food can be organic?
Perchlorate is a toxic substance and an endocrine disruptor. 

Its presence can lead to destabilization of the metabolism, problems in the development of children and thyroid problems.
What a healthy and organic food. 

Definitely not. 

However, some Chinese products tend to more contaminated than others. 

For example, mushrooms, rice, green peas, apples, chicken, fish, garlic and black pepper belong to the most contaminated group of Chinese products that should be avoided.
However, the only way to eat completely organic food is to grow it yourself. 

Such gardens will occupy a small place, improve the local insects especially bees, look attractive and what’s most important, they will provide a completely safe and delicious food.

The Genius of China

Mushrooms bleached by poisonous chemicals to make them look fresh
thestar.com.my

Mushrooms in Shaanxi are being bleached to make them look fresh. These toxic chemicals could cause kidney failure and even death when ingested.

Xi'an -- Mushrooms whitened by poisonous chemicals are the latest food scare out of China.
Suppliers in Shaanxi, the capital of Xi'an in north-western China, used strong chemical additives to bleach mushrooms so that they would appear fresh, Chinese reports said.
Undercover reporters found that the mushrooms were being soaked in a milky-white liquid with a pungent smell.
Local media said the liquid comprised chlorinating agents, anhydrous calcium chloride, sodium sulfite and other chemical additives and preservatives.
The toxic chemicals could cause kidney failure and even death when ingested, the reports said.
After bleaching the mushrooms, the merchants even added some soil so that they looked more "natural".

Poisoning the World

Contaminated food from China now entering the U.S. under the 'organic' label
By J. D. Heyes

The Chinese food production industry is the world's least-regulated and most corrupt, as has repeatedly been proven time and again. 

Now, it appears, there is no trusting anything that comes from China marked "organic."
Natural Health 365 reports that several foods within the country are so contaminated that Chinese citizens don't trust them. 

What's more, the countries that import these tainted foods are putting their citizens at risk.
U.S. Customs personnel often turn away food shipments from China because they contain unsavory additives and drug residues, are mislabeled, or are just generally filthy. 

Some Chinese food exporters have responded by labeling their products "organic," though they are far from it.
There are several factors at play which make Chinese claims of organic unreliable. 

First, environmental pollution from unrestrained and unregulated industrial growth has so polluted soil and waterways with toxic heavy metals that nothing grown in them is safe, much less organic. Also, there is so much fraudulent labeling and rampant corruption within the government and manufacturing sectors that it's not smart to trust what is put on packaging.
In fact, farmers in China use water that is replete with heavy metals, Natural Health 365 noted in a separate report. 

In addition, water used for irrigation also contains organic and inorganic substances and pollutants. Chinese "organic" food is so contaminated that a person could get ill just by handling some of it.
'Dirty water' is all there is
The report noted further: "This is reality – all of China's grains, vegetables and fruits are irrigated with untreated industrial wastewater. The Yellow River, which is considered unusable, supports major food producing areas in the northeast provinces."
Chinese farmers won't even eat the food they produce.

That's because it's clear that China's water pollution issues are so pronounced that it threatens the country's entire food supply.
Chinese farmers have said there is no available water for crops except "dirty water." 

As part of the country's industrial prowess, it is also one of the largest producers (and consumers) of fertilizers and pesticides, Water Politics reported.
The site noted further that as China's industrial might grows, so too does the level of contaminants in the country's water supply. 

Lakes, rivers, streams and falling water tables are becoming more polluted by the year.
In addition to man-made pollutants, animals produce about 90 percent of the organic pollutants and half of the nitrogen in China's water, say experts at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning. 

There are times when water is so polluted it turns black – yet it is still used to irrigate crops, and of course, that affects so-called organic farming operations as well.
These nine foods are particularly vulnerable to becoming tainted, Natural Health 365 noted:

1. Fish: Some 80 percent of the tilapia sold in the U.S. come from fish farms in China, as well as half the cod. Water pollution in China is a horrible problem, so any fish grown there are suspect.
2. Chicken: Poultry produced in China is very often plagued with illnesses like avian flu.
3. Apples and apple juice: Only recently has the U.S. moved to allow the importation of Chinese apples, though American producers grow plenty for the country and the world.
4. Rice: Though this is a staple in China and much of the rice in the U.S. comes from there, some of it has been found to be made of plastic, resin and potato.
5. Mushrooms: Some 34 percent of processed mushrooms come from China.
6. Salt: Some salt produced in China for industrial uses has made its way to American dinner tables.
7. Black pepper: One Chinese vendor was trying to pass off mud flakes as pepper.
8. Green peas: Phony peas have been found in China made of soy, green dye and other questionable substances.
9. Garlic: About one-third of all garlic in the U.S. comes from China.

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