- "China has since captured much of the world's pharmaceutical
market, producing 70 percent of the world's penicillin, 50 percent of its
aspirin, and most of its vitamins. There are already signs that Chinese-produced
vitamins suffer from the same type of quality assurance problems affecting
Chinese food and goods exports. Recently, the European Union discovered
Enterobacter sakazakii, a lethal bacterium that causes meningitis in infants,
in imported batches of vitamin A. In America, traces of arsenic, lead,
and iron have shown up in discount products containing vitamin C."
-
- The New Chinese Take-Out
- By Michael E. Telzrow
- The New American
- 8-22-7
-
- Lucia Cruz, a 74-year-old Panamanian grandmother, and
at least 365 of her countrymen died last year from ingesting tainted medicine.
Somehow a deadly chemical had found its way into cough syrup produced in
a government laboratory. What Panamanians thought was a harmless over-the-counter
drug turned out to be an elixir of death.
-
- Local doctors were mystified by Cruz's initial symptoms.
Unable to explain the rapid onset of acute kidney failure, they directed
her to a public hospital. More disturbing was the fact that Cruz was not
alone. Dozens of other Panamanians were exhibiting the same symptoms. Dr.
Jorge Motta, director of the Gorgas Institute, a joint U.S.-Panamanian
medical initiative conceived to combat avian flu, suspected an emerging
infectious disease. "Was it West Nile or E. coli or some post-influenza
disease? Could it run through the population?" thought Motta. Neither
he nor others, like Dr. Cirilio Lawson, the general director of the Ministry
of Health, knew what was sickening the population. They only knew that
it was spreading quickly, and that it was deadly.
-
- While Panamanian doctors and officials worked to discover
the cause of the sudden syndrome, Cruz and dozens of others lay in agony
as the supposed disease ravaged their internal organs. Wracked by nausea,
vomiting, and high fever, Cruz watched as her limbs swelled to twice their
normal size. Her painful journey came to an end just weeks after the onset
of symptoms. Her doctors, fearful that she had succumbed to a deadly communicable
disease, advised her family to cremate her body.
-
- In the following months, government officials successfully
identified the cause of the illness as diethylene glycol - a highly toxic
organic solvent commonly found in anti-freeze and other industrial applications.
Its source was contaminated cough medicine. By then over 300 Panamanians
lay dead. Lucia Cruz was No. 17. Subsequent investigations revealed that
the diethylene glycol found in the cough syrup had a Chinese origin and
that it had been passed off to a Spanish company as 99.5 percent pure glycerin,
a harmless sweetening ingredient found in drugs. It was subsequently sold
to Panama's Medicom SA, which passed it on to the government lab. Diethylene
glycol also showed up in antihistamine tablets and skin ointments made
in the same lab.
-
- Tainted Track Record
-
- It wasn't the first time that Chinese diethylene glycol
had caused death from ingestion. Ten years earlier, a series of pediatric
deaths were reported in Haiti. More than 76 children, most under the age
of five, succumbed to acute renal failure in much the same agonizing manner
as the Panamanian victims. As in Panama, medical officials were initially
stumped. Kidney failure is uncommon in children, even in Haiti, a country
plagued by a high infant mortality rate. Matters were further complicated
by Haiti's substandard medical facilities. When Centers for Disease Control
officials arrived from the United States to lend assistance, they found
children suffering from respiratory failure, facial paralysis, and brain
damage. They looked to infectious agents, but found none. At the end of
a long and difficult global investigation, they discovered the source -
diethylene glycol-contaminated medicine used to treat fevers in small children.
In a cruel twist of fate, medicine designed to alleviate pain contributed
to the deaths of more than 70 children in an excruciatingly painful manner.
-
- As later occurred in Panama, Chinese manufacturers were
the source of the poison. The modus operandi was also the same: bulk chemicals
fraudulently identified as safe glycerin were sold to European companies,
which then passed them on to drug manufacturers. In the Haitian case, investigators
traced the shipment to Xingang, China, and the Chinese trading company
Sinochem International. According to Dr. Suzanne White Junod, a historian
with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, attempts to find the origin
of the tainted glycerin were hampered by uncooperative Chinese officials.
Her report of the Haitian incident, which appeared in the January/February
2000 issue of Public Health Reports, reveals that the glycerin was not
even made in a pharmaceutical plant, but rather in a "fine chemical
manufacturing plant." According to Dr. Junod, unscrupulous European
middlemen further obscured the origin of the shipment by photocopying their
letterhead onto a copy of the Certificate of Analysis in order to "obliterate
the identity of the supplier." By the time investigators traced the
glycerin to a Manchurian plant, the plant had been closed and the records
destroyed.
-
- Humans are not the only recent victims of contaminated
Chinese food and drug imports. This spring American Food and Drug Administration
investigators determined that Chinese producers had laced wheat gluten
with melamine scrap in an attempt to boost the appearance of added protein
value due to melamine's nitrogen-rich content. This wheat gluten was added
to over 60 million containers of pet food in the United States. The result
has been an estimated 8,000 animal deaths, but an accurate count will not
be known until the FDA finishes its investigation this fall.
-
- Melamine, a kidney-destroying plasticizer when eaten,
is normally used as an industrial coating or as a fertilizer. Its appearance
in other Chinese export food products, such as corn gluten sent to South
Africa, verifies that its use was intentional, not accidental as Chinese
officials claim. Indeed, during an April visit to China, American food
safety inspectors had little trouble finding Chinese workers who openly
admitted that scrap melamine is routinely used to augment low-grade wheat,
corn, and soybean products, particularly those made for animal consumption.
According to an ABC News source, melamine-tainted products have been used
in the United States as hog feed. Despite a subsequent Department of Agriculture
directive to slaughter 6,000 suspect hogs, American consumers are now left
wondering whether melamine has made its way into the human food supply.
-
- Death Trade
-
- Recent revelations of diethylene glycol and melamine
poisoning highlight the dangers faced by unsuspecting consumers. As Americans
are now discovering, the pet-food scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Since the discovery of the melamine-laced pet food earlier this year, a
catalog list of tainted and counterfeit export products has emerged, providing
irrefutable evidence of China's deliberate attempt to dump dangerous products
on the world market. From children's toys to toothpaste, the list continues
to grow.
-
- Tainted and counterfeit toothpaste with a Chinese origin
has been discovered in Canada, in Massachusetts, and in prison systems
in the southern United States. A temporary halt to the import of Chinese
toothpaste has failed to eliminate the threat, as Canadian and U.S. communities
are discovering evidence of tainted toothpaste already in the market. Health
authorities began to warn consumers in early July after tests conducted
on counterfeit toothpaste sold under the Colgate brand name turned up evidence
of harmful bacteria. Canadian authorities then urged consumers to avoid
Chinese toothpaste after high levels of diethylene glycol were discovered.
At the same time, Massachusetts authorities advised consumers to avoid
toothpaste marked "Made in China," and "Colgate" produced
in South Africa, after toxic chemicals were discovered in the toothpaste
sold in several communities. Despite an FDA warning posted in early June,
contaminated products continue to surface, typically in independently owned
grocery and convenience stores.
-
- Tea leaves, the iconic Chinese export, can now be added
to the list of suspect food products. William Hubbard, former deputy commissioner
of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told National Public Radio about
one Chinese manufacturer's practice of drying tea leaves by using truck
exhausts. "To speed up the drying process, they would lay the tea
leaves out on a huge warehouse floor and drive trucks over them so that
the exhaust would more rapidly dry the leaves out," said Hubbard.
"And the problem there is that the Chinese use leaded gasoline, so
they were essentially spewing the lead over all these leaves." Hubbard
noted that the FDA only inspects about one percent of all food and food
ingredients coming into the country, and tests only about half of one percent.
-
- As if contaminated food products were not enough of a
concern, American consumers are now faced with the realization that Chinese-produced
toys pose a health threat nearly as serious as contaminated or tainted
food. In mid-June of this year, more than 1.5 million Thomas & Friends
miniature wooden railway sets were recalled because of lead paint. Neither
the Thomas & Friends manufacturer, RC2 Corporation of Chicago, nor
the British license holder, HIT Entertainment, knew that the popular children's
toys contained lead paint.
-
- Lead paint has the potential to damage developing nervous
systems, and anxious parents now wonder how many other Chinese-made toys
might contain the dangerous material. Preschool children, precisely the
group that is most attracted to these types of toys, routinely put playthings
in their mouths. A toy containing a lead base then becomes a vehicle for
dispersing the harmful substance into a developing child. That type of
exposure may eventually lead to reduced IQ, severe learning disabilities,
kidney damage, and stunted growth, among other adverse effects.
-
- In all, 24 types of toys recalled in the United States
during the first half of 2007 were manufactured in China. According to
the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 60 percent of all toys recalled
in the United States in 2007 were manufactured in China.
-
- "OPEC of Vitamin C"
-
- Most U.S. consumers are aware that Chinese products dominate
the shelves of most retail stores, but few realize the dominance extends
to vitamins and drugs. Fully 90 percent of all the vitamin C sold in America
comes from the communist trade giant. This near-monopoly control of the
vitamin-C market caused the Wall Street Journal to dub China the "OPEC
of vitamin C," and like the oil cartel it has been accused of price
fixing. In 2001, China's four largest producers met to form a consortium,
and shortly thereafter began a series of price manipulations undercutting
U.S. and European competitors. Volatile prices induced American companies,
which were operating in a very different regulatory environment than that
existing in Communist China, to file anti-trust suits. In the end the suits
hardly mattered; the last U.S. vitamin-C plant closed in 2006.
-
- China has since captured much of the world's pharmaceutical
market, producing 70 percent of the world's penicillin, 50 percent of its
aspirin, and most of its vitamins. There are already signs that Chinese-produced
vitamins suffer from the same type of quality assurance problems affecting
Chinese food and goods exports. Recently, the European Union discovered
Enterobacter sakazakii, a lethal bacterium that causes meningitis in infants,
in imported batches of vitamin A. In America, traces of arsenic, lead,
and iron have shown up in discount products containing vitamin C.
-
- Not surprisingly, Chinese authorities dismiss claims
that they are not following international standards, despite mounting evidence
to the contrary. Meanwhile millions of unsuspecting Americans consume both
food and vitamins of a dubious nature without even realizing it.
-
- As the level of Chinese imports continues to hit record
highs, Americans will be potentially exposed to even greater risks. Even
as it stands now, Gary Weaver, director of the Program on Agriculture and
Animal Health Policy at the University of Maryland, estimates that the
average American consumes approximately 260 pounds of imported food annually.
Annual imports of agricultural products currently top $70 billion, twice
the level of 1997. But unlike playthings or clothes, the Chinese origin
of the food is typically not included on the labeling and American consumers
are forced to play Russian roulette when they buy their groceries.
-
- Behind the Problem
-
- What is the underlying problem behind unsafe and hazardous
food from China? Is the problem largely localized to a few local or regional
officials in the vast country? Is China experiencing growing pains as it
rapidly increases its market share over the food that we consume? If it's
bureaucratic ineptness, can that ineptness be corrected through more regulation
and oversight from the central government in Beijing? Or is the Beijing
regime itself the problem? Put simply: should we trust the communist giant
to make and keep its food imports safe as it amasses more and more control
over our food supplies on the way to monopoly control?
-
- Of course, the Chinese regime blames a few corrupt officials,
not the regime. Tan Jiangying, an official of China's food and drug agency,
parroted the official party line recently when he said: "The few corrupt
officials of the State Food and Drug Administration are the shame of the
whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems."
Mr. Tan is right in one sense. The scandals have revealed some serious
problems. But the problems go much deeper than just a few corrupt officials.
-
- The conventional wisdom, espoused by trade specialists
and supported by the mainstream media, is that Chinese central government
control over manufacturers is lax. According to David Fernyhough, of Hill
and Associates, a risk-management firm providing services to corporations
operating in Asia, "The further you get away from Beijing, the more
opaque things get, and at a provincial and municipal level, the corruption,
the influence of the people involved, quite often officials themselves,...
it makes it a very, very difficult environment." Ian Coxhead, a professor
of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Why Files
that China fits the typical pattern of an emerging economy: "China,
like other fast growing economies, is undergoing a transition in which
the opportunities created by markets are expanding much faster than the
institutions that govern them, especially accountability in corporate and
public sector behavior, and governmental capacity for design and implementation
of regulations covering health, occupational safety, etc. Under these conditions,
fraud and corporate irresponsibility are to be expected, and these traits
are hardly unique to China, or even to low-income countries."
-
- Academics and experts may be willing to give China a
free pass for its continued transgressions, but it is doubtful that Americans
will react with such insouciance now that Chinese imports are nearing the
$1 trillion mark.
-
- The reputed lack of central government control to rein
in corruption on the part of individual bureaucrats may be a contributing
factor in the eyes of most experts, but to focus on that individual corruption
is to miss the point. Lord Acton famously remarked, "Power tends to
corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The totalitarian
communist regime that has ruled China with an iron fist for almost 60 years
has had a major corrupting influence on those who wield power from top
to bottom. But the power vested in the top officials puts them in a position
to blame their underlings for the corruption, deflecting attention from
the fact that the system itself is corrupt and will not be changed by replacing
one corrupt official with another.
-
- Despite China's integration into the world economy, it
remains a communist model of brute authority and moral ambiguity - one
that, by the way, is openly hostile to the United States.
-
- Chinese ethical transgressions are mainly designed to
gain an unfair advantage over the West, and they show the disdain communist
leaders have for people. Since instituting market reforms, China has manipulated
currency (which forces them to keep the bulk of the populace at poverty
wages), erected importation roadblocks (which lead to higher prices of
Chinese goods for already poor people), and employed slave labor camps
to reduce labor costs, the most recent example discovered in China's northern
Shanxi province that involved 576 involuntary workers.
-
- Communist China is arguably one of the most brutal "post-Cold
War" regimes. The central government persecutes Buddhists, Roman Catholics,
and other religious groups, and Beijing imprisons an estimated eight million
persons - many of them political dissidents. In a display of utter brutality,
Chinese authorities openly engage in organ harvesting. According to the
BBC, the British Transplantation Society maintains that the organs of executed
prisoners are routinely harvested without consent. China's brutal "one
child" policy and its practice of forced abortions are well known
and require little elaboration here. But it is part and parcel of the lack
of respect for human life that seems to permeate Chinese political will,
extending to their trade dealings with the West.
-
- Questionable Policy
-
- The extent of the problem with China and the cause of
the problem and the low likelihood of change leads us to ask: "Why
is our government sitting on its hands while we give a monopoly on production
to China for items ranging from food to drugs to clothes - all to a country
that is an avowed enemy of the United States?"
-
- Despite our efforts to engage China, first starting with
President Nixon, and carried on by successive administrations, the communist
giant remains a military threat. The People's Liberation Army has developed
and published plans that include an attack on Taiwan. The PLA plan includes
threatening the United States with nuclear war to sway public opinion before
staging an attack on Taiwan. The plan includes strategies that seek to
isolate the United States from its Pacific allies, leaving Japan and others
defenseless in the face of Chinese aggression. According to Philippine
authorities, the Chinese have begun to establish outposts on uninhabited
islands near the island nation. Meanwhile, Los Angeles and Alaska remain
in the sights of a highly advanced Chinese cruise and ballistic missile
system. In a perversely ironic twist, it is American trade dollars that
subsidize China's military build up. Joint venture investments allow the
Chinese to enter the U.S. bond market. There they borrow millions from
U.S. mutual and pension funds and invest the cash in their armed forces.
-
- The world sees that the Chinese are capable of monstrous
acts of brutality such as forced abortions, organ harvesting, religious
and political persecution, and deliberate food contamination. Likewise,
their push for Pacific Rim hegemony and global trade domination is manifest.
Given those realities, is it paranoia to question the prudential nature
of allowing such a nation to gain control of much of our food and drug
supply?
-
- Country-of-Origin Labeling
-
- As already indicated, you cannot escape consuming contaminated
Chinese products by avoiding those marked with "China" as the
country of origin. This is despite the fact that five years ago President
Bush signed into law the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, which
included a provision establishing the requirement for country-of-origin
labeling for beef, lamb, pork, seafood, perishable agricultural commodities,
and peanuts. Republicans, prodded by retailers who claim the provision
is burdensome, delayed implementation.
-
- President Bush, supported by a Republican majority, effectively
nullified the provision by delaying its implementation until September
2008. Political pressure in the wake of the recent scandals appears to
have moved Congress to revisit the provision. Until it is revisited, however,
there is simply no way of knowing whether your food item originates in
China. Not long after the pet food scandal receded from the news cycle,
Food and Drug Administration officials reported that rejections of Chinese
food products reached 257 for the month of April. In contrast, Mexico and
Canada had 140 and 23 respectively. Among the offending Chinese food items
were salted bean curds, which were rejected for being "filthy,"
and frozen channel catfish, which were infected with salmonella and laced
with "a new animal drug" considered unsafe for consumption! The
FDA refusal-actions list includes dried fruits, apple flavored jelly, olives,
frozen seafood, and sardines.
-
- The government's reluctance to enforce labeling laws
has encouraged savvy farmers and independent ranchers to take matters into
their own hands and to market farm-direct products in the wake of the Chinese
import scandals. By marketing directly off the farm, owners can eliminate
the middle man, thereby reducing mark-up. While farm-direct sales have
always existed, increased consumer awareness about Chinese food products
has led to an increase in activity throughout the country, and many Americans
are taking control of their food sources.
-
- One U.S. health food company has taken the country-of-origin
label concept a step further. Orem, Utah's Food for Health International
intends to label its products "China-Free." President Frank Davis
recently told Reuters that "It is a response to the (headlines) coming
out, and we are taking a position that we are not the only ones reading
them."
-
- A comprehensive country-of-origin law would greatly enhance
the consumer's ability to choose, and might even result in a voluntary
boycott of Chinese goods, providing a boost to domestic producers. But
country-of-origin labeling would not be a panacea. For starters, false
labeling, a favorite trick of the Chinese, was discovered on boxes marked
"tangerine candy," and in a number of other instances. In May,
U.S. officials warned Americans to beware of imported fish labeled as monkfish.
It seems that the Chinese exporter mislabeled puffer fish, whose flesh
contains deadly toxin, as the popular monkfish. The tail of the monkfish
is especially prized for its delicate flavor, while ingesting puffer fish
flesh can lead to serious illness or even death from tetrodotoxin poisoning.
According to an FDA press release, a total of 282 22-pound boxes labeled
as monkfish were distributed to wholesalers in Illinois, California, and
Hawaii beginning in September 2006. These fish were then sold to restaurants
or sold in stores.
-
- Degrease the Skids
-
- But even more important than requiring country-of-origin
labeling, or labeling products "China-free," is changing those
U.S. government policies that have greased the skids for China's rapidly
increasing market share of what we buy from toys to food. Those policies
include encouraging American corporate interests to do business with China
and to establish operations there, and providing U.S. taxpayer-subsidized
and -backed loans and loan guarantees through agencies such as the U.S.
Export-Import Bank and the World Bank.
-
- Meanwhile, operations that remain in the United States
are compelled to comply not only with an unfavorable tax situation but
with a massive regulatory system that squeezes profits and forces owners
to pass the costs on to the consumer. The Competitive Enterprise Institute
recently released a report entitled Ten Thousand Commandments 2007: An
Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State. Its preparator, Clyde
Wayne Crews, lays out a picture of a federal regulatory system that cost
Americans $1.14 trillion last year!
-
- America has traditionally been committed to maintaining
a policy of competitive enterprise. In 1952, Harold R. Bruce, government
professor at Dartmouth, wrote in American National Government: "This
policy has its roots both in the democratic political tradition of equality
of opportunity and in the belief that economic progress and efficiency
are promoted by the spur of competition." Unless America returns to
its tradition of "equality of opportunity" by de-regulating the
business environment and seeks to seriously address the trade imbalance,
it will become increasingly dependent upon China at its own peril.
-
- The stakes are high. The ease with which the Chinese
are now able to flood our market with substandard and highly dangerous
consumer and food products gives rise to the question - how hard would
it be to use the current import system to introduce harmful elements into
the food supply as an asymmetrical warfare technique? Given China's record
of brutality and military aggression, is there any reason to believe that
China might not employ such measures in the future, particularly if its
market share of our food supplies continues expanding? For Americans the
possibility seems less fantastic with each new headline. Until the United
States strengthens its ability to prevent the importation of dangerous
goods, and significantly reverses the trade imbalance through a reduction
in regulatory requirements and other measures, American consumers will
be left to their own devices.
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- http://www.jbs.org/node/5001
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