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Chinese Food- a Global Risk?

by Medindia Content Team on Apr 14 2007 5:32 PM

The amount of food export reject lying in the American port has caught the public attention. The list of food is food is quite long. It contains vague items like pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. This is enough to raise the hackles of the people.

The thing that brought the incident to the forefront was the contaminated wheat gluten. Number of cats and dogs died in America due to kidney failure. This is being attributed to the fact that the pet food contained gluten from China. This gluten is contaminated with melamine.

Melamine is a chemical that is generally used in the plastic industry, fertilizers and flame retardants. It is not been termed harmful to the humans.

It sure has brought to the forefront the Chinese food safety. This alarming fact has now become an international apprehension. It has also put due attention of the incapability’s of the American food inspectors to catch problem shipments. The shipments that enter the US are in millions and the inspectors can only check only a fraction of it.

Michiel Keyzer, director of the Center for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit opines "This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade,"

Being the leaders in manufactured goods export .Its exports have grown 20 fold in the past 25 years. It had also increased its export of meat, produce and processed food. This had led to an outcry from other countries affected by the low prices from the Chinese markets.

Though the Chinese authority has tried to bring in stringent measures for inspection of food export but it has not brought in the desired results The Chinese exporters are paying heavily for it. Chinese shrimps and honey are banned in Japan and Europe due to extreme pesticides and antibiotics deposits found in it. Cancer causing chemicals found in fishes have led to a ban of turbots in Hong Kong.

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The problems of the Chinese government are multitude. In order to increase the yield the farmers use all kinds of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Harmful antibiotic are used to control diseases in livestock’s and sea food. The wide spread industrial pollution too adds to the food chain. The Authority finds it difficult to regulate the farming sector as the properties are quite small.

Now the exports from China are being rejected at the rate of 200 per month which is quite a big figure compared to other countries. Thus putting a great set back to the Chinese exports. Mainly due to incomplete or wrong labeling and contamination of the food with pesticides and harmful chemicals

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Source-Medindia
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