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Originally Posted by Moogs
Based on my readings, first hand accounts of others and this, I am convinced the Chinese have no concept of hygiene, quality control for ingestible products, or business ethics.
Western companies should take this as a serious sign that the Chinese are not ready to do business with the real world when it comes to ingestible products. Microchips are one thing... we don't eat microchips. Time for corporate America to play hardball with these people.
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I completely agree, Moogs.
I read this article from the LA Times a few days ago:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...tory?track=rss
Quote:
From a Chinese oil refinery to your Twinkie
Food makers don't often know where the chemicals in their products come from.
WHEN I began researching the ingredients for Twinkies, I naively thought that their raw materials were extracted from nuts, beans, fruit, seeds or leaves, and that they came from the United States. I was looking to link places with foods — along the lines of California wine or Maine lobster, but for thiamine mononitrate. It turned out that I was way off.
Although eight of the ingredients in the beloved little snack cake come from domestic corn and three from soybeans, there are others — including thiamine mononitrate — that come from petroleum. Chinese petroleum. Chinese refineries and Chinese factories. And there are other unexpected ingredients that are much harder to trace. So much for the great "All-American" snack food.
When you bite into a Twinkie, you are chewing on an international nexus of suppliers. Most of our processed foods — salad dressing, ice cream, meal-replacement drinks — are processed with foreign additives: essential ones, like B vitamins for fortifying flour and the preservative sorbic acid, as well as Malaysian or Indonesian palm oil products, European wheat gluten, Peruvian colorants, Chadian gums and Swiss niacin, made from Swiss water, Swiss air (nitrogen) and North Atlantic or Middle Eastern oil. It's a nice contrast to recall that Champagne comes only from Champagne, France.
Like many other industries, food additives have been off-shored. No major domestic vitamin or sorbic acid manufacturers remain in the U.S. Our last vitamin C plant closed in 2005 — in fact, it closed as I was speaking to an employee about a tour — and most of our artificial colors and flavors come from abroad as well. Our chemical industry is rapidly dismantling its expensive domestic plants and either forming joint ventures with Chinese companies or simply buying chemicals from them. This leads to lower food and pharmaceutical prices, but perhaps at the cost of quality control.
How can you have quality control when you don't even know where the ingredient is coming from? During my Twinkie research, I was particularly surprised that many American food additive "manufacturers" buy chemicals, especially vitamins, from distributors and do not know, or don't ask, where they come from. The distributors usually sing the same song, as they often buy from importers, and the importers buy from exporters who — no surprise — are often not able or willing to identify all of their sources.
Now that the tainted pet food scandal has made us more aware that many additives come from overseas, and China in particular — and that some unscrupulous or, at the very least, unprofessional Chinese manufacturers mix cheaper and poisonous adulterants into some food or pharmaceutical products — most of us would like to see some action. What can be done?
[see link for remainder of article]
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All the above provides a final push to get me back to consuming "certified organic natural foods" as the only relatively safe way to eat. Costs more, but at least I'll know I'm not eating antifreeze or a chemical for making plastics.
Again, I'm just
astounded that the American companies who buy these unresearched additives put money and their profits above the health of all the citizens of their own country - including, apparently, their own children. Or maybe they give their kids a list of stuff 'not' to eat.
Greed is just so unbelievably disgusting.
*retch*
And a final caution about buying ingestible products sold at bargain basement prices. The prices are that low for a reason.