"China's food safety woes now a global concern"

In an effort to help revive Deconsumption, I'm going to start posting straight newsfeed on the front page here for a while. I've normally referenced things that were distinctly only "news" items over at the News Room link to the right -- and in fact I'll still update that with anything I feel isn't especially new or noteworthy. But news-and-commentary makes an excellent bread-and-butter format for sites like this. And it'll free me up more to pursue my day job at Home Green Home.

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File this one under "Systems in Crisis":

China's food safety woes now a global concern

"The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef’s nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella.

Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China’s chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.

...Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 percent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while safer, better quality food officially stamped as “green” accounts for just 1 percent of the total, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

...Over the past 25 years, Chinese agricultural exports to the U.S. surged nearly 20-fold to $2.26 billion last year, led by poultry products, sausage casings, shellfish, spices and apple juice."

And these safety problems extend beyond just food and agricultural products. As I've learned in the green building business, if it's imported from China you basically have no idea what was it was made from. In the US (and most of Europe) there are certain reporting requirements like Materials Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for those who wish to look deeper into a product's safety. But materials, chemicals, paints, varnishes, adhesives, coatings, etc which are prohibited or controlled in the US likely have no such restrictions on their use in foreign cheap-labor markets.

So the next time you're shopping at Home Depot -- or ordering those fancy-shmancy children's toys from Melissa & Doug or Magic Cabin, for that matter -- you might think twice about what "Made in China" really means.

Oh...and for the record, I'm not advocating for increased regulation of foreign enterprise. Regulations may help solve some problems, but they can never do so as sweepingly as direct face-to-face personal responsibility. What's abundantly clear from a few years "buying local" is that no one knows the conditions and overall character of a producer better than her or his neighbors and community. And certainly no government fine or censure could be as fearsome a deterrent as that of one's neighbors and community either.

"BUY NOTHING.

And if you cannot buy nothing, then
BUY LOCAL.

And if you cannot buy local, then
BUY REGIONAL.

And if you cannot buy regional, then
BUY NATIONAL.

And if you cannot buy national, then
BUY INTERNATIONAL.

And if some crazy reason you cannot
do any of the above, then go ahead and
BUY A CORPORATE BRAND"

[Update 4/13/07: Here's a great anecdotal account of Chinese "growth at any cost" -- Full Smog Ahead: China's Environmental Woes

"Much Western publicity has been given to Chinese dissidents and environmentalists--leading one to believe that there is a large movement growing there.

Perhaps there is, but my year-and-a-half of living in China did not provide any evidence of this claim. In fact, I met few people with environmental concerns...Most Chinese are used to trusting their leadership utterly—so many Chinese are still not even aware the problems even exist. Consider this anecdote:

One day, I went with my students on a field trip to an amusement park. We drove through some heavily industrialized areas, where the smog limited visibility to less than a quarter mile. We drove past factories making Ikea furniture and Nike shoes as well as Chinese brands. As a Westerner, I felt a certain degree of complicity in causing their pollution problems, since so much of our stuff is made there in factories that produce levels of gunk that would never be acceptable in the US. You could barely see up the road.

"Is it always like this here?" I asked a student.

"Yes," he said. "It is very foggy here."

This was not a grammatical mistake. He actually believed that the black soot in the sky was fog. The next week, I wrote the word smog on the blackboard and asked what it meant. No one knew. I pointed out the classroom window at the darkened horizon.

"Oh, fog!" they said. After I attempted to explain to them the difference between smog and fog, most of them gave dubious looks. They didn't believe me. Obviously "smog" was just a silly Western concept. (It's worth noting that these were the children of wealthy industrialists—industrialists who provide the fodder for the Communist party projects.

The Chinese government has very effectively controlled its citizens' access to information. You might think that would be difficult, with the explosion of computer use and Internet access in recent years. They have, to date, accomplished that by blocking tens of thousands of websites. Google? Blocked. Excite? Blocked. University home pages? Blocked. Anything relating to health and pollution? Blocked. In fact, there are censors working round the clock to limit the population's access to anything that could be considered seditious, or counter to the party line."

Comments

[Parge]

That's a great list of priorities of consumption - especially the "BUY NOTHING" at the top. It deserves some fleshing out though. Maybe include things like "BORROW", "REPAIR", "TRADE", and "BUY USED" near the top and "BUY FAIR TRADE" near the bottom, with a few "BUY ORGANIC"s interspersed throughout. I think that the social benefits derived fair trade coffee and chocolate don't really offset the environmental cost of shipping it thousands of miles to be consumed. But, if you really must have that Mocha Java, it might as well be organic and exploitation-free. What do you think?

[Dennis]

An excellent post and follow up. As Americans, we just assume that our food products are safe and that our government is protecting us. Sadly, that is not true. I'm becoming convinced more and more that raw Capitalism and its central preoccupation with profits over all other considerations is driving many problems like this.

[Loretta]

I have a lead testing kit I used to test my garden soil. After reading your post I decided to test some of my household items just for the heck of it. I started with my glazed ceramics and stoneware, some of which I drink/eat out of daily. The items from Canada, Spain,Ireland, etc., were negative, but when I got to my Made in China mugs--Bingo!--every one tested positive for leachable lead. Kind of scary.

[ginny]

I don't trust the governments of China or the U.S. to protect us from bad food. People hate lawyers until they need one. So, I think it's time the trial lawyers that "Bushies" and Republicans hate do their thing - - - sue, sue and sue every manufacturer as this is the only way in a capitalistic society that we will get protection (based on fear), but nonetheless liability speaks loudly. Insurance carriers will raise liability rates and force the manufacturer to do more quality control on their own. If I made cookies from my kitchen and decided to sell them at work and someone got sick, then I should take responsibility for my negligence, ignorance, mistakes or stupidity. So, go get them trial lawyers!!!!!!!