- Hello Jeff - It just gets worse. Americans just
don't get it. China can label any exported food 'organic' but who knows
what is really in it?
-
- Would I want to eat veggies fertilized with Chinese human
waste? Or, pig or chicken waste in the country that has bird flu and deadly
pig disease?
-
- We know that Chinese companies have mislabeled with intent
in the past so what is to say that an "organic" label outside
is true for the product inside? NOTHING.
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- And does China follow California Organic Foods Standards?
Not a chance. (Nor do Mexicans, who commonly use raw human sewage on
their 'Organic' crops because it is
- 'organic.')
-
- The object is to stop importing or consuming any foods
from China, period.
-
- It's clear we will only have more obfuscation. I was
so angry when I read the article below. Looks like the same old,
same old from China, all dressed up in a new label: 'organic.' What a
joke.
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- Patty
-
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- Food Scares Help China's Nascent Organic Market
- By Ben Blanchard and Niu Shuping
- 5-28-7
-
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- BEIJING (Reuters) -- Fish could give you cancer,
snails meningitis and baby milk may kill your children -- barely a day
goes by without some new food horror story in China.
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- This is helping drive sales in another, though still
tiny, food sector in China -- organic produce. But a loose regulatory
framework and sometimes just plain confusion about what exactly constitutes
organic food has proved a stumbling block, experts say.
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- "It's been a difficult start, but gradually there
has become more of a domestic market, and I think it will take off in the
next few years," said Paul Thiers, an associate professor at Washington
State University.
-
- "The food safety scares are a definite driver of
people's desire to buy organic, and I think that's true in urban China
as much as it is in other parts of the world," added Thiers, who is
also a visiting professor at China Agricultural University.
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- China has 2.3 million ha (5.7 million acres) of certified
organic farmland, according to the International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements, although that is less than one percent of the country's
total farmed land.
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- Sales grew an estimated 50 percent last year, but a
lot of China's organic produce is actually exported.
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- Even President Hu Jintao has waded in. Last month he
called for greater efforts to develop organic farming, showing just how
concerned Beijing has become about food and consumer safety.
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- While tales of heavy metals in vegetables, poisonous
dyes in eggs and fake drugs have been a staple diet of the Chinese press
for the past few years, it has taken pet deaths in the United States to
draw world attention to the problem.
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- Two food processors in China are suspected of adding
the chemical melamine to vegetable proteins used in feed for pets, hogs,
poultry and fish. It was also detected in animal feed, but U.S. officials
insist that presents no real risk to humans.
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- Exports Behind Growth
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- A clutch of dedicated shops have sprung up in Beijing,
Shanghai and other cities, and major supermarket chains are also starting
to offer organic fruits, vegetables, meat and washing up liquid too.
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- "Domestic consumption of organic food is growing,
partly attributed to worries over food safety, but exports are the major
reason for growth," said Luo Min, an official with the China Organic
Food Development Centre, which helps with certification.
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- Those exports were worth some $300 million last year,
according to the centre's figures.
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- Such figures are music to the ears of Zhang Lingyu,
who was jailed for 102 days for promoting pesticide-free food in the 1970s,
at a time when the government prioritised chemical use to squeeze ever
higher yields out of China's limited farmland. "At that
time they thought I was mad. How could you produce farm products without
chemical fertiliser and pesticides?" said Zhang, whose company San'an
Agriculture promotes "safe food".
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- "But now I'm welcomed everywhere. Local governments
have found their products are hard to sell because of the residues,"
he told Reuters. "China depends on its cheap prices to
push its products on the world market, but it ignored safety. Residues
from pesticides and fertilisers are too high," said Zhang.
-
-
- Confusion
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- Yet China's promotion of organic food has run into problems,
not least from a confusion of names, including "non-pollution"
food and "green food", which would not be considered truly organic
in the West.
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- "There are different standards and various organisations
which conduct the certification. Some of the standards can only be applied
to the domestic market," said Luo.
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- Perhaps unsurprisingly in a country notorious for pirated
handbags, movies and many other products, fake labels have proved to be
a headache for organic suppliers. "Distrust of certification
labels is a big problem in the domestic market. People just don't know
what to believe. That's where things have gotten a little better in the
last few years, but that was very difficult early on," said Thiers.
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- "For consumers in urban China who are really looking
for a way to get around this food safety problem, it's very difficult to
know what to believe, and some kind of certification, even if it doesn't
meet a top-notch organic standard for the world, may be attractive to them
as an additional effort at food safety."
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- One up-market restaurant in Beijing thinks it knows
how to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to real organic produce,
though.
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- "You can't always test," said a manager, who
declined to be identified. "But our cook can tell the difference."
-
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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