mmmmm... safe...

I saw the following story in the news today. We all remember the cat and dog food scandal that went on in March. Turns out the company was cutting rice protein concentrate with melamine - the stuff they paste onto particle board to make faux wood table. After that we had the toothpaste scandal, where they somehow got diethylene glycol into a number of toothpaste brands. Coincidentally, DEG is sometimes used as a substitute for glycerine in drugs. Of course, typical Chinese style, the government immediately claimed that the levels were far below the safe limit. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? This has also happened with fish, pigs, juice dye and more recently Thomas the Tank Engine's paint.

I've had Chinese people tell me to be careful of the Kedi convenience stores because they lie about the expiration dates on food.

So where does this leave us?

A new list! Things in China that could be tainted. Coming soon. Until then, here's the article from the Globe and Mail which outlines how a government official has finally admitted that unsafe products are a problem and explains how they are "paying great attention to the problem" and allowing the suspects to escape detention. Somehow, despite the variety of products being given to American prisoners and pets alike, Wang Xinpei still seems to believe that the quality of China's products can be said to be "guaranteed". Can be said to be guaranteed? Of course they can be said to be safe - like my landlord says that my washing machine works, that is, unless you want to use it to wash things made of cloth...

China says safety of exports 'guaranteed'

AUDRA ANG

Associated Press

June 28, 2007 at 2:46 AM EDT

BEIJING — A government spokesman guaranteed the safety of Chinese exports on Thursday in a rare direct commentary on rising international fears over Chinese products.

Wang Xinpei, a spokesman for the Commerce Ministry, said China “has paid great attention” to the issue, especially food products because it concerns people's health.

“It can be said that the quality of China's exports all are guaranteed,” Mr. Wang told reporters at a regularly scheduled briefing.

The statement was among Beijing's most public assertions of the safety of its exports since they came under scrutiny earlier this year with the deaths of dog and cats in North America blamed on Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine.

Since then, U.S. authorities have turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe colour additives and popular toy trains decorated with lead paint.

Chinese-made toothpaste also has been banned by numerous countries in North and South America and Asia for containing diethylene glycol, or DEG, a chemical often found in antifreeze. It is also a low-cost — and sometimes deadly — substitute for glycerin, a sweetener in many drugs.

On Wednesday, three Japanese importers recalled millions of Chinese-made travel toothpaste sets, many sold to inns and hotels, after they were found to contain as much as 6.2 per cent of diethylene glycol.

Mr. Wang said Chinese experts have already “explained the situation.”

He gave no details, although the country's quality watchdog has in past cited tests from 2000 that it said showed toothpaste containing less than 15.6 per cent diethylene glycol was harmless to humans.

The New York Times reported early Thursday that about 900,000 tubes of tainted Chinese toothpaste have been distributed in the United States, showing up in correctional facilities and some hospitals.

Officials in Georgia and North Carolina told the Times there had been no illnesses reported, and that the toothpaste in question was being replaced with brands not manufactured in China.

Earlier this month, a spokesman for North Carolina's Department of Correction said Pacific brand toothpaste was distributed to prisoners who could not afford to buy a name brand at prison stores. The tubes were taken away after trace amounts of DEG was found in them.

Also Thursday, state media said Beijing police raided a village where live pigs were force-fed wastewater to boost their weight before slaughter, underscoring the country's chronic food safety problems.

Plastic pipes had been forced down the pigs' throats and villagers had pumped each 220-pound pig with 44 pounds of wastewater, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

Paperwork showed the pigs were headed for one of Beijing's main slaughterhouses and stamps on their ears indicated that they already had been through quarantine and inspection, the paper said. Suspects escaped during Wednesday's raid and no arrests were made, it said.

The case underscored China's chaotic food safety situation, where manufacturers and distributors often use unapproved additives, falsify expiration dates or find other methods of cutting corners to eke out small profits.

Earlier this week, inspectors announced they had closed 180 food factories nationwide in the first half of this year and seized tons of candy, pickles, crackers and seafood tainted with formaldehyde, illegal dyes and industrial wax.

“These are not isolated cases,” Han Yi, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, was quoted as saying in Wednesday's state-run China Daily newspaper.

Mr. Han's admission was significant because the agency has said in the past that safety violations were the work of a few rogue operators — a claim aimed at protecting China's billions of dollars of food exports.