ARE YOU REALLY WHAT YOU EAT?
September is National Food Safety Month. It was created in 1994 to heighten the awareness about the importance of food safety education.
But since 1994, the issue of our food safety has been expanded to include much more than handling, preparation and storage. Now we find that politics has been introduced into the equation with Congress having to write legislation and provide regulations, especially with regard to how our food is labeled and shipped before it ever reaches the supermarket and ultimately our table.
As recently as January of this year, CNN had an article on their website about the issue of foreign food imports which have exploded in recent years. Accoring to the USDA, those imports totalled $119 billion in 2014 which is the most recent information we have.
While the U.S. has had several instances of food grown or processed domestically becoming contaminated with ecoli, or listeria or a host of other dangerous bacteria, even more troubling is the fact that food safety regulations in other countries are not as strict as what we have here. And with the increase in imported food, we just don’t have enough inspectors to keep up.
Only about 2% of all imported food products are tested in a lab according to the FDA. The FDA completed 1,403 facility inspections overseas in 2013. This was just over half of what is mandated under our Food Safety Modernization Act, and is less than 0.5% of the 285,977 foreign food and feed facilities registered with the FDA.
Seafood is by far the largest category of imported food. I stopped buying talapia or ordering it at restaurants some time ago once I learned how these fish were raised in China. There are now some talapia farms in the U.S. and Canada. Just read your labels.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we import more than 90% of our fish and seafood, which makes no sense at all when we have some of the longest coastlines of any country in the world. The amount of information surrounding this issue is too complex and voluminous for me to get into here, but we do have to blame the many regulations placed upon our commercial fishermen for some of this problem.
Even more troubling is the fact that even fish that are caught off our coasts are sent to China for processing. China makes up about a quarter of all fishery imports to the U.S., according to NOAA. It also farms 100 times more fish than the United States.
According to the Food & Water Watch website, in an article dated in June of 2011, much of the frozen or canned produce, seafood, candy, vitamins or any type of processed food, either the products themselves or their ingredients, came from China, where food manufacturers are notorious for cutting corners, substituting dangerous ingredients, or compromising safety in order to boost sales.
Many of us with pets remember the pet food recall scare of 2007 where thousands of dogs and cats died in the US when imported Chinese pet food products were contaminated with malamine, a nitrogen containing compound.
If they would contaminate pet food on purpose to increase their profits, why would we not have doubts about the food we feed our own families here?
According to a report called A Decade of Dangerous Food Imports from China, two-thirds of the apple juice that Americans consume—more than 400 million gallons annually—comes from China; 90 percent of America’s vitamin C supplements come from China; and in 2010, China supplied the U.S. with 88 million pounds of candy.
China makes about 85% of imported artificial vanilla as well as many vitamins that are frequently added to food products, like folic acid and thiamine. (Remember that doctors recommend that pregnant women take folic acid which helps prevent neural tube defects, serious birth defects of the spinal cord such as spina bifida and the brain, such as anencephaly. If that folic acid is contaminated in any way, we can only imagine the harm that could come to an unborn infant.)
One in 11 canned peach products consumed in the U.S. comes from China; 20 percent of frozen spinach and half the cod consumed in the U.S. come from China. And in 2009 more than 75% of the tilapia Americans consumed came from China (which is about the time I stopped buying it).
An article in the Wall Street Journal in June of last year reported that the House of Representatives had voted to remove country-of-origin labels on beef, pork and chicken sold in the U.S. These country of origin labels, often referred to as COOL, were mandated by Congress in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills. They required meatpackers to identify where animals are born, raised and slaughtered.
But the House was hoping to prevent a long battle over the labels with Canada and Mexico. Under political pressure, they repealed the COOL legislation after the World Trade Organization said that such labeling discriminates against animals imported from Canada and Mexico.
Read labels carefully. Watch out for packages which state “prepared for”, “packed by” or “imported by”. Look for the small print. A package may say Pacific Salmon on the front but most of these products come from fish farms in the Orient where there are no regulations on what is fed to these fish. I have restrained from giving you that information due to space here, as well as the “gagging factor”. Never buy any type of fish that comes from Vietnam or China.
Watch labels on canned fruit and canned mushrooms. Also garlic, another Chinese product. Much honey is shipped in huge containers from China and re-packed here. So buy local.
©Joan Rowden Hart 2016
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