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China rejects U.S.
pistachios over ants
   BEIJING — China said Saturday it had rejected a shipment of pistachios from the United States because it contained ants, the latest indication the government may be retaliating as Chinese products are turned back from overseas because of safety concerns.
   The state television report, which showed inspectors wearing face masks and sealing the shipping container that held the pistachios, indicated an increasing push to show that other countries also have food safety issues. On Friday, a Chinese food safety watchdog announced that shipments of health supplements and raisins from the U.S. had been returned or destroyed because they did not meet quality control standards.
   China’s food- and drug-safety record has come under scrutiny in recent months following the deaths of cats and dogs in the United States and Canada blamed on tainted Chinese pet food ingredients. Since then, U.S. inspectors have banned or turned away a growing number of Chinese exports — from monkfish to juice to toothpaste — because they contained life-threatening levels of toxins or unsafe chemicals.

'ANTS'? Come on, couldn't they come up with something better than that? They sound like high school kids! And they are running a country of millions! Sorry China, maybe next time we'll send our peanuts over laced with arsonic....now THAT would really be something to bit** about!

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In China today, it’s the economy, not democracy, stupid
Jim Hoagland is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Jim Hoagland

   BEIJING — Tiananmen Square is somnolent this June. Chinese tourists in T-shirts loll in the shadows along its northern perimeter. Two small police cars roll softly by on opposite sides of the world’s largest square to ensure that it stays this peaceful.
   The eye tells you in this and other ways that China has moved far beyond the uprising of students, workers and some officials that captured the world’s interest and admiration before being brutally repressed 18 years ago this month — the last time I was here.
   Beijing has become an urban Godzilla since then: Concave, convex and cantilevered skyscrapers march erratically across the ridges of an unending, perpetually smogfilled skyline. These canyons of steel and glass corporate fortresses visually testify that money and material ambition have totally eclipsed the demands for democracy — and honesty in government — that filled the streets in one of the 20th century’s great moments of peaceful public protest.
   The ear hears this message as well — from China’s Communist leadership, from foreign investors who pour dollars, euros and yen into the world’s manufacturing hub, and from ordinary citizens who speak about the “events” at Tiananmen Square in June 1989 with great caution or undisguised evasion. How obsolete of you to ask what remains of the spirit of Tiananmen, they suggest.
   After all, the world moved in the same direction after the 1980s, an under-appreciated decade that was filled with mass political movements that I watched upend dictatorships in Poland, the Philippines and East Germany, and which set the stage for the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. The political ferment of the ’80s quickly gave way to obsessive popular concern with money and spreading free markets around the globe that has not run its course.
   Precisely because it was unfi nished, the Tiananmen revolt still shapes China today, even if in subterranean fashion. A visitor’s eyes and ears do not tell the full story. This country’s Communist government runs nearly as scared as it did when its troops killed hundreds, probably thousands, of protesters 18 years ago.
   The repression of organized political dissent continues to be a tool of control for China’s current leaders. But their one-party monopoly on power is based even more on providing annual economic growth rates of around 10 percent that bring a highly visible flow of consumer goods and other material benefits to the country’s urban population.
   The Chinese government does much to encourage the development of the economy and consumption of consumer goods, entertainment and sports. But any political media would be highly controversial,’’ says Victor Yuan, the head of Beijing’s most sophisticated market research and polling company. “This brings a real fever of entrepreneurship and a highly developed Internet culture on every subject, except political discourse.’’
   President Bush predicted last week that this dichotomy could not last — that free-market reforms would inevitably lead to political reform. China’s leaders do not share this belief. Neither does the man who ranks as the most important dissident in China today.
   Bao Tong was a senior aide to Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang and played a leading role in crafting China’s initial economic reforms in the 1980s. But Bao was jailed for showing sympathy toward the pro-democracy demonstrations. Released from prison into house arrest in 1996, he has only recently been allowed such freedoms as meeting with foreign journalists. In a long conversation last week, he confirmed that my eyes and ears were not getting the full story.
   Yes, there is change. When I walked in the park today, I heard criticism of the government that would have brought death sentences in Mao Zedong’s time. But nothing like this can be broadcast or published in the media. Nothing like this can be said in an organized meeting. Nothing will be allowed that would affect the political situation.
   “The change you see and hear is the flowers, and the leaves. But there is no change in the root. That is the party’s control over everything, including control over the market. Money is to the leaders today what revolution was to Mao — a tool to control the people,” the 74-yearold former official told me. “The unchanged root is the one-party dictatorship.”
   So, did the students and workers of 1989 fail? No, Bao responds: “They should have protested, and they did. The party failed. The party violated the constitution and its own charter. It became a Communist Party without communism, without any concern for the people. I feel proud of those who protested. I feel ashamed of the leadership.”  

  
  
  

They send us poison and we take it. We send them a few ants and they have the Beijing Tea Party?  Come on, give me a break.

I think that China was retaliating against us for rejecting many of it's products due to quality concerns not just the pet food but some human food too.

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Apple growers brace for expected competition from China
BY KIMBERLY HEFLING The Associated Press

   GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Farmers have been growing apples here since before the Civil War, and as times have changed, they have changed with them, planting smaller trees to speed up harvests and growing popular new varieties to satisfy changing tastes.
   But the growers who have made this mountainous region the core of apple-growing in Pennsylvania worry that they face a new challenge that may be too big to overcome and could change their way of life.
   Like farmers in the bigger appleproducing states, they are becoming increasingly anxious about the prospect of China flooding the U.S. market with their fresh apples — an event many believe is inevitable, even if it could be years away.
   They saw what happened in the 1990s when Chinese apple juice concentrate made it into the United States. Prices got so low, some U.S. juice companies were forced out of the U.S. market. Growers could no longer afford to grow apples just for making juice.
   With the Farm Bill up for renewal this year for the first time since 2002, apple growers are pressing for an unprecedented amount of federal funding to develop technologies to make harvesting less costly, and aid to develop overseas markets.
   Even before new questions were raised this year about how well China enforces food safety rules, some growers were also pressing the U.S. government to require country-of-origin stickers on all apples.
   “We’re facing a threat that we’ve never faced before in terms of their ability to come in and essentially replace every apple that we produce in this country numerically and at a much lower cost,” said John Rice, a seventh-generation grower whose grandfather made money in the Depression era by gathering apples from area growers and shipping them to England in 100-pound barrels.
   Rice’s family today owns 1,000 acres of orchards and packs and markets apples for 50 area growers primarily in Pennsylvania’s historic growing area in Adams County, on the Maryland border.
   “We have to lower our costs and we have to do what other successful business have done in the face of Chinese competition, and that is to innovate, to stay ahead, to either grow new varieties that they don’t grow in China, or whatever it takes,” Rice said.
   Fifteen years ago, China grew fewer apples than the United States. Today, it grows five times as many — nearly half of all apples grown in the world.
   China’s advantage is its cheap labor. A picker makes about 28 cents an hour, or $2 per day, according to the U.S. Apple Association. In 2005, workers in Pennsylvania made about $9 to $10 per hour, and those in Washington state about $14 per hour, the association said.
   Discussions between the U.S. and China over whether its fresh apples can be brought into the United States have been going on since 1998.
   To gain access to the market here, China must prove that it meets U.S. standards for pest and disease control. The U.S. Apple Association said the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent a list of more than 300 insects and diseases of concern to the quarantine inspection agency of the Chinese government in 2003. The Chinese government responded the next year, and then the United States asked for information on 52 pests from the list.
   The value of U.S. apple production was estimated at more than $2.1 billion last year. About 60 percent of the apples are sold as fresh fruit, and about 25 percent are exported. Pennsylvania ranks fifth behind Washington, New York, California and Michigan in the number of apples grown.
   Already, U.S. apple growers compete with Chinese growers for sales in parts of Southeast Asia and India.
   After Chinese juice concentrate entered the U.S. market, the average price for juice apples fell from $153 per ton in 1995 to $55 per ton in 1998. The industry filed an antidumping case but lost on appeal with the U.S. Commerce Department. Today, more than half of imported concentrate comes from China.
   “It was an uproar within the industry,” said Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association. “What can we do? It just takes the bottom right out of our market when the product is being delivered to New York City for less than we can process and harvest it here in the United States.”
   Like in many areas of farming, many U.S. apple-growing operations have been absorbed by bigger ones. Some smaller remaining operations have survived by selling directly to consumers at farmers markets or developing niche markets selling organic or specialty apples.
   Third-generation Pennsylvania grower Dave Benner, 61, like most growers, has slowly replaced older larger trees in his orchard with smaller dwarf ones that are close together. That makes the fruit easier and faster to pick. He also pays close attention to consumer demand and to the world market.
   “Business is still business whether you’re in agriculture production or you’re in commercial manufacturing,” Benner said. “When people want small economical cars, then the automobile industry had to change. When people say they like the flavor of Gala or Fuji apples . . . that’s what I have to be growing.”
   Because more than half of the cost of growing apples goes toward labor, researchers have been working to develop technology and practices that will help cut labor costs. Among the concepts under development are machines that will allow apples to be mechanically picked without bruising, and platforms that lift up pickers so they don’t have to climb ladders.
   The apple industry is working with other fruit and vegetable industries to seek, in the 2007 Farm Bill, about $1 billion annually for research, a state block program, a program that helps it develop overseas markets and for expansion for a program that provides fruits and vegetables to school kids.
   Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, called these “basic nuts-andbolts” items that would improve competitiveness.
   The current Farm Bill, which was worth about $100 billion, passed in 2002 and expires in September. In it, country-of-origin labeling was mandated, but its implementation has been delayed until September 2008 because of opposition by retailers and others who say it is too burdensome.
   Most apples already carry the labeling, but Mark Barrett, 52, a grower in Washington’s Yakima Valley, said full implementation is the best way to help U.S. apple growers.
   “I believe if we had country-oforigin labeling that the consumers would buy U.S. all the time,” Barrett said.
   Allen, the head of the New York apple growers group, said it would be hard to promote U.S. apples as being better than foreign-grown apples if consumers can’t be sure where they have been grown.
   One bad apple, he said, might give all apples a bad name.

After the toothpaste and dog food issues.....are we THAT dumb??

Hey, at least we have the train set up once they get to the west coast to come right into Rotterdam!

http://www.newsmax.com

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Bank of International Settlements:
Credit Boom May Spark Depression

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is warning that the global economy could be on the brink of a major depression similar to the one that occurred in the 1930s.

The BIS said that years of loose monetary policy have fueled a dangerous credit bubble leaving the global economy more vulnerable to an economic catastrophe than is generally understood.

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In its 77th Annual Report for the financial year April 1, 2006-March 31, 2007 that was submitted to the BIS’ annual general meeting held in Basel on June 24, the BIS — which one source described as "the ultimate bank of central bankers" — noted that the Great Depression that began in 1929 caught many off guard and unprepared.

"Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and southeast Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a 'new era' had arrived," said the bank.

Several worrying signs, including mass issuance of new types of credit instruments, soaring levels of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors and entrenched imbalances in the world currency system, have all made the Bank wary the global economy is at serious risk.

The BIS pointed to China as a possible spark that could cause a sudden global downturn.

The BIS said "China may have repeated the disastrous errors made by Japan in the 1980s when Tokyo let rip with excess liquidity." "The Chinese economy seems to be demonstrating very similar, disquieting symptoms," the BIS claimed, noting China's credit and asset boom.

The Bank described China's booming economy as "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable" — a comment apparently made by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
The BIS also took a swipe at the U.S. Federal Reserve, noting that the central bank was rethinking the easy credit policies of former Fed chief Alan Greenspan.

The BIS was not sanguine about the dollar, citing America's huge trade and deficit imbalances with U.S. external liabilities growing to over $4 trillion from 2001 to 2005.

"The dollar clearly remains vulnerable to a sudden loss of private sector confidence," the BIS report stated.

Worrisome too is the bubble created by private equity deals and hedge fund activity.

"Sooner or later the credit cycle will turn and default rates will begin to rise," the BIS said.

"The levels of leverage employed in private equity transactions have raised questions about their longer-term sustainability. The strategy depends on the availability of cheap funding,"

The warnings of the BIS should not come as a surprise to readers of MoneyNews.com. While we are not predicting a 1930's style depression, we have warned that a global credit boom has put that global economy in jeapordy.

Needs and wants have become blurred in alot of cases....alot of new technology in such a short time and at 'reasonable' costs have influenced the choices between needs and wants......not to mention the narcisitic views....

We have become cumbersome......to ourselves.....we have made our bodies indulgences worth far more than the wrinkles, blindness, and dust it becomes.......

Is it all relative???

Noooooooo...we just became global...simple as that!

That would mean it is all relative until we realize who/what is yanking the other end of the chain that is attached to our nose rings.......

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Feds find problems, put hold on farmed seafood from China
BY ANDREW BRIDGES The Associated Press

   WASHINGTON — Farmed seafood joined tires, toothpaste and toy trains on the list of tainted and defective products from China that could be hazardous to a person’s health.
   Federal health officials said Thursday that they were detaining three types of Chinese fish — catfish, basa and dace — as well as shrimp and eel after repeated testing has turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood.
   The officials said there was no immediate health risk and stopped short of ordering an outright ban.
   The Food and Drug Administration announcement was only the latest in an expanding series of problems with imported Chinese products that seemingly permeate U.S. society.
   Beyond the fish, federal regulators have warned consumers in recent weeks about lead paint in toy trains, defective tires, and toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze. All the products were imported from China.
   China, meanwhile, insisted Thursday that the safety of its products was “guaranteed,” making a rare direct comment on spreading international fears over tainted and adulterated exports.
   FDA officials said the levels of the drugs in the seafood was low. The FDA isn’t asking for stores or consumers to toss any of the suspect seafood.
   “In order to get cancer in lab animals you have to feed fairly high levels of the drug over a long term,” said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection. “We’re talking not days, weeks, not even months but years. At these levels you might not reach that level, but we don’t want to take a chance.”
   He added, “We don’t want to be alarmist here. … it’s a low likelihood.”
   The FDA said sampling of Chinese imported fish between October and May repeatedly found traces of the antibiotics nitrofuran and fluoroquinolone, as well as the antifungals malachite green and gentian violet. Of particular concern are the fluoroquinolones, a family of widely used human antibiotics that the FDA forbids in seafood in part to prevent bacteria from developing resistance to these important drugs. The best known example is ciprofloxacin, sold as Cipro, which made headlines as a treatment during the 2001 anthrax attacks.
   The FDA will allow individual shipments of the five seafood species into the country if a company can show the products are free of residues of these drugs.
   “This action will put a hold on the products of concern at the port of entry. This shifts the burden of proof back to the importer to prove to us that it is safe,” Acheson said.
   China is the third largest exporter of seafood to the United States, according to the FDA. More than half of its global seafood exports are farmed. But only about 5 percent of farmed Chinese fish is inspected by the FDA, agency officials said.
   The use of drugs in foreign fish farming operations has long been a concern of federal and state regulators. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi recently banned imports of catfish from China after tests detected antibiotics not approved for use in humans.
   “Clearly the addition of these drugs, it’s a deliberate event,” Margaret Glavin, the FDA’s associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, told reporters. “If they stop adding them the problem is going to go away.”
   The FDA acted after finding problems with 15 percent of the Chinese seafood it tested. Glavin said the FDA also has found companies in the Philippines and Mexico using the drugs and has issued similar import alerts for those firms’ products.  

  
  
  

Well, I guess this is a learning process for China. They will have to adapt to the regulations of other countries in order to trade.

If they stop quickly and do a "turn around" what do you think that ripple effect will cause here???? Get ready.......

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Pope calls on 12 million Catholics in China to unite
BY NICOLE WINFIELD The Associated Press

   VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI made his most signifi cant attempt to unite China’s 12 million Catholics Saturday, urging the underground faithful and followers of the state-run church to overcome decades of animosity and distrust.
   Benedict lamented the lack of religious freedoms in China and called the government-sanctioned church “incompatible” with Catholic doctrine for appointing bishops without Vatican approval. But he also said he hoped the Vatican could reach an agreement with Beijing authorities on nominations.
   In an unprecedented gesture, Benedict revoked 1988 Vatican regulations that had called for limiting contact with China’s offi - cial clergy and excommunicating bishops consecrated without the pope’s consent.
   The pope’s comments came in a letter translated into five languages — including Mandarin in both traditional and simplified characters — a sign the Vatican wanted it widely read. It issued two accompanying documents highlighting key points and posted the letter on the Vatican’s Web site.
   However, Liu Bainian, the vice chairman of the state-run China Patriotic Catholic Association, said Saturday he had not seen the letter and that the church had no immediate plans to read it out to the faithful or distribute it.
   Qin Gang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said China would “continue to have a frank, constructive dialogue with the Vatican in order to resolve differences between the two sides.”
   China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, shortly after the officially atheist Communist Party took power. Worship is allowed only in government-controlled churches, which recognize the pope as a spiritual leader but appoint their own priests and bishops.
   Millions of Chinese, however, belong to unofficial congregations that are not registered with the authorities and have remained loyal to Rome.
   Several times in the letter, Benedict praised the Catholics who had resisted pressure to join the offi cial church. But he also urged them to forgive and reconcile with followers of the state-run church for the sake of unity.
   “Indeed, the purification of memory, the pardoning of wrongdoers, the forgetting of injustices suffered and the loving restoration to serenity of troubled hearts ... can require moving beyond personal positions or viewpoints, born of painful or difficult experiences,” he wrote.
   Benedict referred repeatedly to the “Catholic Church in China” without distinguishing between the divisions.
   “He underlines the unity of the church, which is fundamental because with this affirmation reconciliation becomes possible,” said the Rev. Bernardo Cervellera, director of AsiaNews, a missionary news agency close to the Vatican.
   China’s Foreign Ministry called on the Vatican not to interfere in Beijing’s internal affairs in the name of religion. It also urged the Vatican to sever ties with rival Taiwan.
   The Vatican said it was prepared “at any time” to move its diplomatic representation from Taiwan — which split from China in 1949 — to Beijing when an agreement with the government is reached.
   The Cardinal Kung Foundation, a U.S.-based foundation that supports the underground church, said the clandestine priests “will follow the pope’s guidelines and instructions.” In an e-mail to The Associated Press, the foundation relayed what it said was the initial opinion of some underground clergy in China.
   “He truly respects and hopes for total, genuine religious freedom in China and views it as essential for the normalization of relations,” the clergy said. “We hope and pray that the Chinese government will understand these very important points.”
   Benedict cited the church law that calls for automatic excommunication of any bishop ordained by the official church without the consent of the pope.
   But he highlighted mitigating circumstances, saying clergy were often pressured to join the official church or face persecution, and he left it up to individual bishops to decide how to proceed.
   In another measure to eliminate divisions, Benedict also revoked special Vatican allowances for underground bishops trying to ordain new priests and perform other duties. The allowances had been granted because publicly celebrating the rites in traditional ways could have attracted attention and resulted in retaliation.

There's a union.....

http://www.timesunion.com

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China finds problems with kids' snacks  
  
By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press
Tuesday, July 3, 2007

BEIJING -- Chinese inspectors found excessive amounts of additives and preservatives in dozens of children's snacks and seized hundreds of bottles of fake human blood protein from hospitals, officials said Tuesday.
  
China's dismal health and safety record -- both within and outside its borders -- has increasingly come under the spotlight as its goods make their way to global markets. Major buyers like the United States, Japan, and the European Union have pushed Beijing to improve inspections.

China accused the media of hyping the problems.

"I think it would be better if the media would stop playing up this issue," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

"China has taken measures and enacted relevant legislation regarding inspection and monitoring of its food export process. China has been very responsible in this regard to ensure the good quality and safety of its exports," he said.

Inspectors in southwest China's Guangxi region found excessive additives and preservatives in nearly 40 percent of 100 children's snacks sampled during the second quarter of 2007, according to a report on China's central government Web site.

The snacks -- including soft drinks, candied fruits, gelatin desserts and some types of crackers -- were taken from 70 supermarkets, department stores and wholesale markets in seven cities in the region, it said.

Only 35 percent of gelatin desserts sampled met food standards, the report said, while two types of candied fruit contained 63 times the permitted amount of artificial sweetener.

The report did not say whether any snacks were recalled or if any manufacturers faced discipline. Calls to the Guangxi Industrial and Commercial bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.

Some 420 bottles of fake blood protein, albumin, were found at hospitals in Hubei province but none had been used to treat patients, Liu Jinai, an official with the inspection division of the provincial food and drug administration, said in a telephone interview. No deaths or illnesses were reported.

A shortage of albumin triggered a nationwide investigation in March into whether fakes were being sold.

A state media report last month centered on an inquiry in the northeastern province of Jilin, where 59 hospitals and pharmacies sold more than 2,000 bottles of counterfeit blood protein. One person died from use of the fakes, state media said.

Albumin is a primary protein in human plasma that is important in maintaining blood volume. It is used to treat conditions including shock, burns, liver failure and pancreatitis, and is needed by patients undergoing heart surgery.

Chinese authorities have struggled with recalls following the widespread sale of fake polio vaccines, vitamins and baby formula. Such incidents threaten both public health and faith in the government's ability to control crime and corruption and ensure safety of food and drug supplies.

In May, the country's former top drug regulator was sentenced to death for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.

Fears that China's chronic food safety problems were going global surfaced earlier this year with the deaths of dogs and cats in North America blamed on Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine.
U.S. authorities have also turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with leaded paint. Chinese-made toothpaste has also been banned by numerous countries in North and South America and Asia for containing diethylene glycol, or DEG, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze.

Beijing has striven to appear active in cleaning up problem areas. Inspectors recently announced they had closed 180 food factories in China in the first half of this year and seized tons of candy, pickles, crackers and seafood tainted with formaldehyde, illegal dyes and industrial wax.

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EDITORIALS
Beware those cheap Chinese imports

   Stories of tainted food and other harmful exports from China have been appearing with alarming frequency of late, but at last it appears that the governments of both China and the United States have started to take the problem more seriously. They need to take it a lot more seriously, as it has become increasingly apparent that many Chinese businesses are unscrupulous as a matter of course. In the meantime, consumers need to pay more attention where their food comes from and think twice before buying the cheapest imports.
   Last winter’s contaminated dog food scandal was bad enough; now it’s the lives of humans being endangered by such items as poisonous toothpaste, toy trains with lead paint, tires without standardized tread-separation technology and, last week, farm-raised seafood laden with unhealthy amounts of antibiotics and food additives.
   None of the antibiotics or food additives identified in the Food and Drug Administration’s “import alert” on shrimp, catfish, eel, basa and dace were legal. Some were known carcinogens, while others are believed to increase resistance to antibiotics in humans.
   This is no small problem because 22 percent of our imported seafood — $1.8 billion worth last year — comes from China. And the failure rates for Chinese seafood inspections are dismally high: Of the 125 total seafood shipments refused by the FDA last year, 63 percent were Chinese.
   And yet the FDA has been doing fewer lab checks on imported seafood every year — from 0.88 percent of all shipments in 2003 to 0.59 percent last year. While it’s gratifying that the FDA isn’t afraid to send tainted products back, as it did last week, it’s clear from China’s dismal track record — with fish, other food and manufactured goods as well, that a much more watchful eye needs to be kept on its imports.
   After finding 23,000 food-safety infractions, the Chinese government did shut down 180 food manufacturers last week and acknowledged systemic problems in its food supply. But until it can demonstrate a sustained commitment to fixing its mess, both the U.S. government and U.S. consumers need to be careful.  

  
  
  

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China product recalls make consumers wary
Country’s many small producers often sidestep food safety rules
BY AUDRA ANG The Associated Press

   XIAMEN, China — Perched on stools, four workers stuff freshly made noodles into plastic bags on the ground floor of the two-story Lin family home. A black-and-white mutt wanders lazily around their feet. Flies circle and land at will.
   Bags and basins cover almost every inch of a concrete floor that is partly damp, partly sticky with dough. Weak sunshine through the front door provides the only light in the sweltering room.
   These noodles aren’t exported; they’re only sold locally. But the hidden and unregulated nature of the Lins’ business — and countless others like it — helps to explain why China is caught in a food crisis.
   “We’re not allowed to apply for a permit to make food because this is our home, and we’re not supposed to work out of it,” says Lin, who squeezes out a living through his illegal noodle business, nestled in a dusty warren of workshops and residences on the edge of this port city of 1.6 million.
   “Of course we can’t meet national food safety standards,” his wife, Chen, says. They refuse to give their full names and fear talking to reporters. If anyone finds out, she adds, “my family will starve.”
   China faces an uphill battle as it rushes to fix its regulatory system amid a raft of disclosures of tainted exports to the U.S. and other major markets.
   “It is becoming increasingly urgent to raise the food safety standards to international levels,” the state-run China Daily newspaper editorialized last week.
   China’s reputation has collapsed in recent months since deadly toxins and dangerously high levels of chemicals were found in exports ranging from frozen fish to pet food.
   The discovery of diethylene glycol, a thickening agent in antifreeze, as a cheap sweetener in Chinese-made toothpaste has resulted in bans in Asia and North and South America. On Friday, U.S. regulators ordered a recall of three more Chinese-made products deemed dangerous to children: jewelry decorated with lead paint and building sets with small parts that pose a choking hazard.
   “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” said Michael F. Moriarty, vice president of A.T. Kearney, a Chicago-based consulting firm that recently put the cost of fi xing China’s food safety system at $100 billion. “China is a very entrepreneurial supply market, and enthusiasm sometimes outweighs prudence,” he said.
   The world’s most-populous country is awash in tiny momand-pop operations. Chinese authorities announced last month that they had closed 180 food factories since December after inspectors found formaldehyde, illegal dyes and industrial wax being used to make candy, pickles, crackers and seafood. All had fewer than 10 employees.
   Another regulating agency said it shut 152,000 unlicensed food producers and retailers last year for making and selling fake and lowquality products.
   But new ones keep popping up. About three-quarters of the country’s million or so registered foodprocessing plants are small and privately owned, according to the China Daily. That doesn’t include the unregistered ones.
   The most distinguishing feature of China’s central food-safety regulatory system is that there isn’t one. Responsibility is split among at least six agencies, including those that handle health, agriculture and commerce. The lines of authority are ill-defined, and different bodies oversee different laws.
   “Things fall through,” said Philippa Kelly, a Beijing-based consultant who works with the Chinese government on food-safety issues.
BRIBERY RAMPANT
   Adding to the problem is rampant corruption. Officials can be bribed, and instead of shutting down illegal operations, many regulators just impose fines so they can collect more money in the future, Yang said.
   Chinese officials insist that exports are safe, though they have also called for stricter inspections and threatened violators with punishment in an apparent effort to reassure international customers.
   “Ninety-nine percent of food exported to the United States was up to safety standards over the past two years, which is a very high percentage,” says Li Yuanping, a Chinese official in charge of imported and exported food safety.
   Exports are subject to tighter specifications and multiple checks by authorities both in China and importing countries. But there are gaps, Yang said, because “regulatory agencies are often short on staff and funds in various localities and cannot fully police the manufacturers.”
   Some companies do it right.
   Amid the banana trees and industrial parks on the outskirts of Xiamen, Donghai Frozen Foods Co. Ltd. learned the price of failing to keep up with international standards.
   Two years ago, it had to discard 2,000 tons of “edamame,” a boiled soybean snack, because they did not meet new Japanese pesticide regulations that had come into effect after the soybeans were processed.
   Donghai, which has 300 foodhandling employees, ships 7,000 to 15,000 tons of frozen vegetables a year, mainly to Japan, the U.S. and Australia.
   On a recent afternoon, soy beans arrived by the sack from the company’s fields and were briskly unloaded by workers.
   In an airy building, two women in white face masks filled a huge metal steamer with crates full of cleaned pods. Others poured cooked beans into crates of ice for cooling. Anything that dropped on the floor was discarded.
   Guo Mingfeng, head of administrative affairs at the Taiwanese-owned company, said five to 10 self-inspections are performed during processing and more checks are done by both China and the importing country.
   “We know what happens from field to factory,” he said. “We have full control of the process.”
   Ultimately, experts say, the answer to China’s woes lies in efforts like Donghai’s.
   “Food or indeed any other product is not really improved by legislation or government control,” said John Chapple, who heads Sinoanalytica, a food analysis laboratory in the coastal Chinese city of Qingdao. “It is improved because the people producing it see the commercial benefit in making it happen.”
   The problem, he said is that despite exceptions such as Donghai, “it’s not happening in China yet.”

http://www.dailygazette.com

Quoted Text

Imports nearly tripled over 5 years
BY MARTIN CRUTSINGER The Associated Press

   WASHINGTON — First it was pet food that sickened dogs and cats. Then came warnings about toothpaste, toy trains, car tires and several types of fi sh.
   The warnings had one thing in common — all of the products came from China. And that has people worried.
   “I’m scared to death. We are dependent on our government inspecting things,” said Joyce Simple, a church secretary, interviewed on a recent shopping trip to a Wal-Mart in Houston. “I would be careful of anything that came from China.”
   For Emily Pokora, a 24-year-old law school student in Phoenix, the problem hit even closer to home. Her cat got violently sick in March after eating tainted pet food. While the cat survived, the episode has shaken Pokora’s faith in the products she buys.
   “You go to the store and you can’t trust anymore that it’s not going to kill your animal or hurt you,” she said.
   The string of recalls has not gone unnoticed by shoppers, based on Associated Press interviews around the country.
   “Here we’re buying all of these products from China and they’re not adhering to our standards. It’s very disturbing,” said Joanne Metler, a community college teacher in Chicago.
   The food and safety issues are one more irritant in a trade relationship already strained by a ballooning U.S. deficit with China. That deficit hit $233 billion last year, the highest ever recorded with a single country. Imports of Chinese products into the United States totaled $288 billion while U.S. exports to China totaled $55 billion. That means for every $1 in goods the United States sells China, China sells the United States more than $5 in products.
PRODUCTS FLOOD U.S.
   Chinese exports to the United States last year were nearly triple the level of just five years ago. The flood of Chinese products has increased since China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, a development that removed many of the remaining U.S. barriers.
   China is now the dominant supplier in a whole range of areas that go far beyond the athletic shoes and low-priced clothing that have traditionally displayed the Made in China label.
   Meanwhile, Cao Wenzhuang, a former department head at China’s drug regulation agency, was sentenced to death Friday on bribery charges. A department director at the State Food and Drug Administration, he was given the death sentence with a two-year reprieve on charges of accepting bribes and neglecting official duties, said his lawyer, Gao Zicheng.
   Cao, who oversaw the pharmaceutical registration department, had been secretary to Zheng Xiaoyu, the head of the agency, in the 1980s. Zheng was sentenced to death in May for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.
   In the pharmaceuticals department, Cao, 45, had the power to approve pharmaceutical production in China from 2002 to 2006.
   Of the toys sold in America, 80 percent are produced in China. China has become the top foreign source of tires in the United States with imports from all countries accounting for about 40 percent of the U.S. market last year. China is now the world’s leading supplier of seafood, shipping $1.9 billion worth of fish and shellfish to the United States last year, making it the third biggest foreign supplier in the U.S. market.
DEFECTS ON INCREASE
   The increase in imports, however, has been accompanied by rising numbers of defects being discovered. The number of Chinese-made products that are being recalled in the United States has doubled in the last five years. Chinese imports accounted for more than 60 percent of the recalls announced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission this year and all of the 24 toy recalls.
   “The government of China is struggling to enforce the limited standards they have given the hundreds of thousands of Chinese firms in the export business,” said Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute, a Washington think tank.
   Chinese officials, while accusing the media of hyping the problems, have moved to show they are taking the concerns seriously. China announced last week that it had closed down 180 food manufacturers that were found to have used industrial chemicals and additives in their products.
   Donald Mays, senior director for product safety for Consumer Reports, said that many of the problems in China feature an element of unethical business practices.
   “Pressure from the importers to keep prices low can sometimes force the factories to cut corners,” Mays said. “That could mean leaving out a key safety feature.”
   One of the toy recalls involved 1.5 million of the popular Thomas & Friends trains because the toys had been coated at a factory in China with lead paint, which can damage brain cells, especially in children.
   The government ordered Foreign Tire Sales of Union, N.J., to recall 450,000 tires after the company notified regulators that some of the Chinese-made tires were missing a safety feature that keeps the tire tread from separating. The Chinese company denied the accusation.
   The pet food products had been found to contain Chinese wheat flour spiked with the chemical melamine to make it appear like more expensive, protein-rich ingredients, while the Chinese-made toothpaste was found to contain an ingredient often used in antifreeze. The Food and Drug Administration on June 28 placed restrictions on imports of Chinese shrimp, catfi sh, eel, basa and dace after finding residues of drugs the FDA does not allow in fi sh.
   And on Thursday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of Chinesemade jewelry that the agency said could cause lead poisoning and a magnetic building set and plastic castles with small parts that CPSC said could choke children.
CONGRESSIONAL CRITICS
   These problems have caught the attention of Congress, with members already highly critical of what they see as unfair trade practices they contend have pushed the defi - cits higher and contributed to the loss of 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000.
   “Tires, toys, toothpaste, pet food, fish — day after day and product after product, evidence of lax product regulation in China and inadequate import security in the U.S. mounts,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a frequent critic of China.
   “There’s no question that too many Chinese manufacturers and food producers put the bottom line ahead of safety,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “The fact that every week we have to frantically pull Chinese goods off store shelves shows that our safeguards are failing.”
   Schumer called for creation of an import czar in the Commerce Department to better coordinate import inspections being done across a range of agencies.
   Critics also have complained about budget cuts during the Bush administration that have left various federal regulatory agencies stretched thin. But industry groups said much of the impetus for cracking down on abuses will come from individual companies concerned about protecting their reputation with the public.
   “Any time this happens, we go back to the table to see what we can do to improve our system,” said Carter Keithley, president of the Toy Industry Association, which represents American toy companies. He said his group has been holding seminars in China for the past 11 years to teach companies there how to make toys more safely.
PRICE LURES SHOPPERS
   Many shoppers in the AP interviews said they still planned to buy Chinese products because of the low prices.
   “There’s always a trade off — quality versus cost,” said Panneer Gangatharan, a 31-year-old software consultant in Pasadena, Calif. “I’m not sure how feasible it is for the United States to do anything about it, because the volume of products we’re buying from overseas is huge.”
   Economists say it is unlikely that the current uproar over Chinese goods will make a dent in the flood of imports from that country or America’s trade deficit with China.
   “Ultimately, the U.S. consumer is attracted to cheap Chinese goods. As long as they keep the price low, U.S. consumers will keep buying,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.
   Many analysts believe the U.S. deficit with China will keep rising until China starts heeding the Bush administration’s suggestions to overhaul its economy so growth is based more on domestic demand and less on exports. The administration, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is conducting high-level talks aimed at getting the Chinese government to make changes such as revaluing its currency to deal with the huge trade imbalance.
   But even if that occurs, analysts don’t expect any significant improvement for several years.
   “There is so much momentum behind our deficit with China that I don’t think it will turn around very quickly,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York.  

  
  
  

We're our own worst enemy in this case, we like to save money then complain when we have no good manufacturing jobs because we buy our products from China and other cheap labor countries. We're starting to feel the pressure from having to depend on other countries for our needs and oil is the perfect example as it shows how we're at the mercy of the countries who have it.

We are too expensive for ourselves......

http://www.capitalnews9.com

Quoted Text

BEIJING(AP) China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.

The execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.

During Zheng's tenure from 1998 to 2005, his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.

"The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems," agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China's track record on food and drug safety.

Yan was asked to comment on Zheng's sentence and that of his subordinate, Cao Wenzhuang, a former director of SFDA's drug registration department who was last week sentenced to death for accepting bribes and dereliction of duty. Cao was given a two-year reprieve, a ruling which is usually commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have reformed.

"We should seriously reflect and learn lessons from these cases. We should step up our efforts to ensure food and drug safety, which is what we are doing now and what we will do in the future," Yan said.

Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration.

His death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the leadership's determination to confront the country's dire product safety record.

Interesting.  Instead of executing a warrant against you, they just execute you.  Nice.  

The good ole USA may have it's problems b