She feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China

It seems unlikely that when Leonard Cohen composed his song "Suzanne," he had formaldehyde, textile dyes and borax in mind...

So guess who's coming to dinner???


As it turns out, our pets are not the only ones affected by tainted food from Asia. As you might recall, the recent poisonous pet food scare has been linked to Asian food companies adding Melamine (a plastic) to wheat gluten to boost the appearance of protein. Apparently the practice of "melamine scrapping" is considered an "open secret" in China. Unfortunately, it also appears that this sort of dishonesty is prevalent in Asian food production.

This comes from the May 9 2007, Wall Street Journal:

HONG KONG -- Formaldehyde, which has been linked to cancer, has legitimate uses in adhesives and embalming. But in Indonesia, Sutikno, a 35-year-old tofu maker in south Jakarta who goes by one name, uses it to keep the tofu he sells fresh.

"Formaldehyde is magic. There is no comparison," he said on a recent afternoon at the market. Last year, he switched briefly to a legal preservative, but his bean curd went bad in less than 24 hours. As for his customers, he doesn't tell them he uses formaldehyde. "There is no complaint," Mr. Sutikno said.

From Wikipedia:

Pesticide-Covered Vegetables

In early 2006, Greenpeace tested vegetables in two Hong Kong grocery stores , Parknshop and Wellcome, and discovered that over 70% of their samples were covered in pesticide residue. Thirty percent of their vegetable samples exceeded safe levels of pesticides and several tested positive for illegal pesticides, such as DDT, HCH and Lindane. Greenpeace explained that nearly 80% of vegetables in these grocery stores originated from mainland China. John Chapple, manager of Sinoanalytica, a Qingdao-based food analysis laboratory, supplemented Greenpeace's information. He was not surprised by the findings and explained that farmers in China have little knowledge of correct pesticide use. ^[57]

Some more examples:

• Sudan I- a textile dye banned for human consumption, being added to foods such as chili sauce to boost colour (US companies in Asia such as KFC and Heinz have been found to use it)
• Sudan I being fed to animals for brighter yolks
  
• "frying powders" being added to deep frying oil (which allows for the oil not to be changed regularly- eeeeew!)
• Borates (used in insecticides and flame retardants) used as food preservatives
• Pervasive use of Formaldehyde as a food preservative where refrigeration is scarce

Need more proof to support and eat locally grown, organic food?