JUST BEFORE the United States and China sat down this week for another round of talks on trade and economics, Menu Foods made an announcement: The company is holding off using Chinese ingredients in the pet food it manufactures. Most of that food, marketed under myriad brand names, is made at Menu’s plant in southeast Emporia.
Menu says that a Chinese supplier sold it adulterated ingredients that sickened and killed some pets and forced a nationwide recall of the company’s products.
Menu’s announcement is sure to be mentioned at the trade talks, but it may be pushed aside by questions about the safety of foods and food additives produced in China for human consumption.
On Sunday, The Washington Post published reports of continuing problems with adulterated food exported from China to the United States — food that poses a risk to health and perhaps to life.
The Post said that in the first four months of this year, the Food and Drug Administration, which is charged with assuring the safety of imported food, refused 298 food shipments from China. Problems found included cancer-causing chemicals used as a preservative for dried apples and seafood coated with putrefying bacteria. That the shipments were turned back would be reassuring, if not for the fact the FDA has only the resources to check less than 1 percent of the imports for which it is responsible.
It is clear that China, in its race to create a free-market economy, has yet to establish the regulatory mechanisms that protect consumers from the unbridled greed of some of that country’s new entrepreneurs. In a global economy, that is a problem for everyone.
The employees of the Menu Foods Midwest plant in Emporia have already been stung by the greed of a gluten-maker half a world away. The Post article makes it clear that many more Americans are at risk by a dangerous liaison of Chinese laissez-faire and an understaffed and underfunded FDA.
Emporia is not immune to that risk. Food produced in China is sold in Emporia. More important, so are many American-made foods that contain ingredients or nutritional supplements produced in China.
This week’s trade talks are of more than academic interest to people in Emporia. Adulterated food becomes a national, state and local problem. China may be far away, but the immediate problem could be right here, on the end of your fork.
blulitespecial (anonymous) says...
Chinese backwater manufacturors also made and sold a kid's toothpaste with ethylene glycol (antifreeze) in it.It was found in Indonesia and Australia that I know of.This is just the tip of the poison iceberg.
May 24, 2007 at 4:28 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )