I just found this 20 page pdf from June 2011 - I highly recc people read it.... but for those who can't, here's some of the highlights.
<snipped from pdf>
Summary*Since joining the WTO, China’s food exports to the United States have tripled to nearly 4 billion pounds of food in 2010, worth nearly $5 billion.
*These food imports both compete with American-grown crops and expose consumers to a host of food-borne hazards. Many Chinese crops are undercutting U.S. farmers as Americans eat more Chinese imports — especially fruits and vegetables.
*Imports from China have escalated despite repeated discoveries of deadly contamination, intentional product adulteration and food-borne illness in Chinese products.
....
melamine-laced baby formula,
salmonella-tainted seafood, carcinogenic honey, deadly blood-thinning drugs and poisonous food packaging from China appear almost daily in media outlets around the world.
*In some cases, risky Chinese foods or ingredients have entered the global food supply wrapped in the familiar labels of international food companies.
In 2008, the chemical melamine contaminated Chinese dairy products, sickening 300,000 children and infants in China, six of whom died.
.....melamine was then found in the food supplies of multinational agribusinesses, including
Mars, Unilever, Heinz,Cadbury and Pizza Hut.
* (FDA) The agency’s low inspection rate — less than 2 percent of imported produce, processed food and seafood — almost guarantees that unsafe Chinese products are making their way into American grocery stores.
*China is the largest agricultural economy in the world and one of the biggest agricultural exporters....
.....is the world’s leading producer of many foods Americans eat:
apples, tomatoes, peaches, potatoes, garlic, sweet potatoes, pears, peas, mushrooms*By 2007, 90 percent of America’s
vitamin C supplements came from China, and by 2010, China supplied the United States with
88 million pounds of candy*The United States also imported 102 million pounds of sauces, including soy sauce; 81 million pounds of spices; 79 million pounds of dog and cat food; and 41 million pounds of pasta and baked goods from China in 2010
*China’s food supply is polluted with agrochemicals, veterinary medicines and intentional chemical adulteration in food-processing factories. China’s farmers and fish farmers often use
dangerous levels of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides — including
banned chemicals. These chemicals can remain on foods long after harvesting and processing.
*China also supplies around 85 percent of U.S. imports of
artificial vanilla, as well as many
vitamins that are frequently added to food products,
like folic acid and thiamine.(note: the 2007 melamine contamination (below) is nearly identical to what is happening now with the jerky treats, however.... With the current pet illnesses/deaths, FDA has stated they do not yet know the cause)
*China’s dangerous culture of chemical adulteration and counterfeit food products came into focus for American consumers in 2007, when China exported pet food ingredients tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.
*(what is melamine?) A byproduct of coal processing that is used frequently in plastics, melamine has attracted the interest of unscrupulous Chinese food processors and animal producers because of its high nitrogen content and low price.
*In 2007, the FDA received reports of
17,000 pet illnesses,including
4,000 dog and cat deaths, believed to be the result of melamine contamination in the imported Chinese gluten ingredients used to make pet food.
Sixty million packages of pet food were recalled in the United States, the
largest in history.
Some of the
melamine-contaminated pet food was redirected to hog farms; thousands of hogs that ate the contaminated food were put to death in an effort to keep melamine-contaminated meat from entering the food supply. But the FDA and USDA still
allowed 56,000 hogs that ate melamine-tainted pet food to be processed into pork,which was then sold at supermarkets.*In 2007, China demolished nearly 3,000 food-processing plants after a nationwide inspection found widespread use of
illegal industrial chemical ingredients such as dyes, mineral oils and formaldehyde in foods including flour, candy, crackers and seafood.
*An
infant formula scandal erupted just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
China waited five weeks after discovering melamine in baby formula to issue a recall.
An estimated
300,000 infants and children were sickened by melamine; more than 12,000 were hospitalized. At least six children died.
*
Melamine-tainted milk has also been exported worldwide in the form of dairy powder, an ingredient in processed foods.
*Chinese dairy producers increasingly are switching from melamine to a
new protein adulterant that is even more difficult to detect — hydrolyzed leather protein made from scraps of animal skin.
*China dominates the international
honey market and became the largest U.S. honey source after joining the WTO, supplying more than 70 million pounds by 2006. For years, regulators had closely scrutinized Chinese honey for drug residues, including one that can be fatal.
*In 2010, Chinese authorities found a banned,
highly toxic pesticide in cowpeas, a legume similar to black-eyed peas.
*FDA inspectors, who are responsible for 80 percent of the food supply,95 are unable to catch most unsafe food before it enters the U.S. food chain because they inspect so little of it.
*For decades Congress has weakened the FDA by allowing its regulatory responsibilities to far outstrip its resources. Increasingly, the FDA is developing programs that trust the private sector — at home and abroad —
to regulate itself, a recipe for disaster.
*U.S. agribusinesses have invested heavily in Chinese chicken production and processing — both to feed Chinese consumers and as a future export platform to U.S. consumers.
Tyson Foods has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Food & Water Watch chicken operations in China, including a 60 percent stake in one of China’s largest poultry operations that
produces 3 million chickens every week.Tyson has also invested in a processing unit and a breeding facility that will expand into a large-scale broiler production operation in 2011.
Goldman Sachs purchased 10 poultry farms in China for as much as $300 million in 2008.
Keystone foods, a major supplier of food products to fast food restaurants, including
McDonald’s, operates a sprawling chicken processing plant in China.
*In 2009,
U.S. companies had more than $2.8 billion invested in Chinese food-processing and manufacturing operations alone.
*While China is increasingly feeding Americans, America is feeding China’s animals. Soybeans comprise almost the entire volume of U.S. food exports to China, which feed Chinese livestock and fuel the growth of factory farms.
*In January 2011, Chinese President Hu Jintao again visited the United States, cementing tens of billion of dollars in trade deals with the Obama administration. Shortly after this visit, the USDA announced new steps it had taken to honor China’s request to export chicken to the United States.
*A wide range of agribusiness and food companies operate in China. The U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill operates 34 facilities in China with 4,400 workers in agriculture and food industries.
*
Wal-Mart has 279 stores and facilities in China, quadrupling their presence between 2007 and 2010.
*
Nestlé owns or has a majority stake in more than a dozen Chinese companies and operates at least 21 factories, including the world’s largest bouillon-manufacturing plant.
*
Kraft Foods has a dozen operations in China and in 2010 acquired Cadbury, which makes candy in China.
*
Mars also makes candy in China.
*
General Mills operates three production facilities and maintains a half-dozen other operations in China.
*In 2010,
PepsiCo committed to invest an additional $2.5 billion to bring its total operations in China to at least 26 beverage and food plants and 10 farms.
PepsiCo is one of the largest potato growers in China, to manufacture its Lays brand potato chips.
*China’s WTO entry brought a flood of unsafe food to the United States, inundating the American diet with risky seafood, processed fruits and vegetables, and fresh produce.
Although U.S. agribusiness promised the trade deal would be good for America and expand U.S. farm exports, it has only benefited corporate exporters of a few products like soybeans and poultry.
Corporate-driven trade deals under the WTO prioritize investments and commerce above all other goals. This model threatens consumers who could be sickened or killed by unsafe food, and it exposes Chinese sweatshop workers to agricultural toxins and other dangers. Meanwhile, U.S. employers are offshoring American jobs and U.S. farmers are losing their land and livelihoods to benefit corporatecontrolled food manufacturers.
The environment also suffers from overuse of agricultural chemicals and pollutants.
[
link to documents.foodandwaterwatch.org]
:uhoha:
:blueomg:
