What with the announcement that the cardboard baozi story was, in fact, an adulterated version of the truth, or possibly not, I'm officially retiring the list of adulterated food. Unless someone dies in my arms, I'll leave the reporting to the pros. Not that I didn't call the story months before it blew up, of course, but that's just sour grapes...
Local baozi made with cardboard and caustic soda. I've probably downed a couple of these...
Previously-
And here's a Globe and Mail report on fake building materials used in the construction industry. Oy vey.
Fake plasma used in Chinese hospitals. Thanks, Alexis.
Antibiotics and antifungals found in imported fish. I'm feeling smug, now.
China promises to do better. Good luck with that.
The diethylene gylcol toothpaste shows up in the US. At the Dolla Store.
An interesting article on Chinese food safety. From the Southern Metropolis Daily, via Danwei.
Alexis mentioned in the comments that fugu was being sold as monkfish in the US.
China is executing the former head of it's FDA and establishing a recall system.
While that friend and defender of the little guy, the Bush administration, takes China to task for food safety, Mom and Lina have been on the case, and dug up these new examples of delicious adulteration.
Toothpaste made with diethylene glycol as a thickener. Best known as windshield washer fluid, the chemical is also popular in the manufacture of wholly counterfeit medicines as well.
Contaminated traditional Chinese medicines. (Ironically, besides arsenic, cadmium, lead, strychnine and mercury, some patent medicines are being adulterated with pharmaceuticals like acetaminophen or cortisone.)
Melamine added to pet and livestock feed, as well as protein flours for human consumption, to increase its apparent protein content. The New York Times just published an expose on the subject. As an ex-carpenter, I should have recognized the adulterant. Mom pointed me to the FDA alert. Thanks, Mom.
The article mentioned some new and exciting contamination- eels battened on birth-control pills, and cuttlefish dipped in (calligraphy) ink. Looking deeper, I found this article on the People's Daily website, which mentions fish dipped in formaldehyde and bamboo shoots treated with industrial sulfur.
I'm especially interested in the birth-control eels, if anyone can point me to some solid information on it.
Carcinogenic wax added to hotpot and to pepper oil. A lot of contamination has to do with Sudan 1. Chinese people like their food to be really red.
Human hair made into soy sauce.
Synthetic eggs (in shell).
Carcinogenic red dye in duck eggs.
"Sewer Grease" in lard.
Fake infant formula, causing a condition known as "Big Head Disease".
Bleached Rice contaminated with aflotoxin.
In an ironic twist, it seems that Chinese farmers are being swindled with counterfeit pesticide. (I have to say that we get very nice vegetables and fruit here in Beijing, probably on account of all those banned pesticides.)
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The FDA just released a warning on Friday (?) concerning "monkfish" from China. Apparently, some of it is causing illness/death, and, based on chemical analysis, they think it might actually be pufferfish.
Mmmm...pufferfish.
See, this is what I don't get. Why pawn off obviously, famously poisonous stuff on consumers when you can just pawn of mildly harmful crap? The glycerin/diethelene glycol swap is a good example. Why not just use human saliva instead?
The fake eggs, for instance, aren't even cheaper to make than real eggs. It's just that you can bang them out in bulk, while a chicken lays only so many per week. It just seems unnecessary.
Honestly, Chinese industry seems culturally equivalent to American business circa 1890, when bakers would spike bread with alum, and color candy with lead salts. Besides having no real equivalent of an FDA (it exists, it's just not enforcing anything), there's such a rush for profits that it seems to draw out examples of the most despicable human behavior.
On the other hand, there is also a pervasive "what could it hurt/close enough is good enough" attitude here, probably a direct result of zero health education in the provinces, the total destruction of the medical community during the Cultural Revolution, and rule by fiat for the last fifty years. A friend who works in public health has told horror stories about HIV transmission in rural clinics- needles used to inject dozens of people, mandatory drug rehab centers where the patients are not told if they're infected, and the infamous blood-selling scandal where the plasma from multiple people was mixed together and re-infused into the donors.
Tangentially, I can sort of add fugu to the list of pantophagy. I've never had the sushi, but down at Decibel in New York, I've had grilled fugu fins in hot saki. It's a tasty, brothy concoction, with little crispy fins floating in it, but you've got to finish it before it goes cold.
An excellent analysis which a reader could miss since it's buried in the comment section. Send it to the New York Times, for heaven's sake.
Thanks, Mom.
Yes, well, it could be related to a lot of cultural differences. A few potential sources that I can think of include:
The Asian tendency towards distrust of strangers vs. American tendency towards trust.
You hinted at this one. Asian business model of starting out with a cheap "good enough" product, and adapting to the market and making piecemeal improvements as one goes along. Famous example: Honda motorcycles. Compare to American attempts to imagined perfection in initial offering, with eventual faltering of quality once consumer base is considered entrenched. Famous examples: Starbucks, Walmart.
I think, at least here in China, that many of the factors at work are really political, rather than "cultural" in a larger sense. The centralized dictatorship in China produces situations where people, for good reasons, do as little as possible to attract the attention of the government one way or the other. Then, when a command finally comes down from on high, there's a mad scramble to carry it off in the fastest way possible. Generally, this means throwing manpower at it, rather than coming up with some finessed solution.
This does have something to do with guanxi and whatnot, but the same sort of thing's probably going on right now in Russia or Mozambique. Anywhere with limited political freedom and calamitous (rather than escalating) penalties for misbehavior. Noting motivates, or discourages, like a bullet to the head.
In fact, the high risk / high reward structure of Chinese business probably attracts psychopathic personalities who get off on it. "Cake or death?"
Heeyyyy, here's an even better one for you:
Chinese hospitals use fake blood drips
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