Don't Like Chinese Food? You're Eating it Without Even Knowing It

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Don’t Like Chinese Food? You’re Eating it Without Even Knowing It

Everyone knows how common the “Made in China” label is on manufactured goods. A trip to WalMart in search of something, anything, made in America is a fool’s errand. And one can even understand, without necessarily supporting, the economic forces that lead to mouse traps, underwear and toasters being made there instead of in Cleveland, OH or Rochester, NY. But most people, I think, have a general assumption that when it comes to food, in most cases, the economics and logistics are such that most of the stuff you toss into your shopping cart at the grocery store may come from another state, or another coast even…but probably doesn’t come from China. Who would think, for example, that it’s less costly to buy honey that was produced and packaged in China, transshipped to India (where it is repackaged in new barrels and relabeled as “product of India”), and then shipped across the ocean to a port on the West Coast before making its way into our food chain?

But in the decade that has passed since China’s acceptance into the WTO, food imports from that country to the US have more than tripled. As a result, according to an eye opening paper published by the group Food and Water Watch,

Unfortunately, it’s not just China’s food that’s reaching American shores — it’s also China’s food safety problems.

They further note that

There is no indication that China’s food safety situation is improving. The Wild West business environment in China encourages food manufacturers to cut costs and corners. Even Chinese officials have publicly acknowledged their inability to regulate the country’s sprawling food production sector. U.S. food safety inspectors have been overwhelmed by the surging food imports from China since the country joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, (and) The FDA inspects less than 2 percent of imported food and barely visits Chinese food manufacturers. The FDA conducted only 13 food inspections in China between June 2009 and June 2010.

The entire report, A Decade of Dangerous Food Imports From China, along with their recommendations to Congress for addressing this problem, is an important and interesting read about a subject many of us are perhaps only vaguely aware:
http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/…

How pervasive are Chinese food imports on the shelves of US grocery stores?

Almost 80% of Tilapia fillets and 50% of all Cod consumed here comes from China.

70% of all apple juice consumed here is made from Chinese apples (laced with pesticides that have been banned in the US)

Almost 22% of all frozen spinach comes from China.

China is now our 2nd largest source of US processed fruit and vegetable imports.

China exported 88 million pounds of candy to the US last year. Happy Halloween.

The problem with this is at least twofold. China’s agricultural producers are heavily dependent upon agrichemicals, which they overapply, and many of the chemicals they use have been banned or severely limited here in the US. Banned pesticides sell in the Chinese Black Market for as little as a third of the cost as legal ones. Their fish farms make heavy use of veterinary drugs and fungicides, which remain in the fish destined for US tables. Industrial pollution in China is so bad that most of the waterways that are used to irrigate fields there have high levels of heavy metals and toxins which are subsequently taken up by the crops.

There are so many individual actors in the Chinese food production system, from growers to processors to exporters, that regulating and policing the system is virtually impossible. The good news for Americans is that China mostly exports the best quality food that results to other countries, even though the FDA has found that of the few food items it does reject after inspection, more than a quarter of it contains unsafe chemicals and/or unsafe levels of chemicals or other additives. That also means that the Chinese themselves are left with the worst of the worst in their own food chain.

The impact of global trade of food has also had an impact upon the face of the American farm economy. Michigan, for example, is the third largest US producer of apples. Yet the glut of cheap, low quality Chinese apples has virtually eliminated the juice market for domestic growers. As a result, Michigan has seen the demise of some 200 family orchards in the face of the onslaught from China. Washington and New York have experienced the same thing. California, which once supplied 90% of the garlic consumed in the US, has seen many growers exit the business for the same reason. If one food source was simply replacing another, with the same quality at a lower price, it would be one thing. But such is not the case.

American agriculture, overall, is doing pretty well in the global market, even though there have been many casualties in the specialty crop or fruit vegetable sector. Grain producers are doing quite well, however. Interestingly, however,

While China is increasingly feeding Americans, America is feeding China’s animals. Soybeans comprise almost the entire volume of U.S. food exports to China, which feed Chinese livestock and fuel the growth of factory farms.

…and therein lies the next big trade skirmish.

U.S. food giants like Tyson, Cargill, KFC, Kraft, General Mills and PepsiCo are heavily invested in China’s food production sector. Goldman Sachs has purchased 10 huge poultry farms in China, so you know they are expecting to reap some large rewards down the road. Who knew that Lays potato chips are made with Chinese potatoes? And you thought it was hard to make an unhealthy product worse.

American agribusiness giants very much want to open the U.S. market to Chinese poultry. In 2006 the USDA, with George Bush’s urging, approved a proposal to open up our markets to Chinese processed chicken, even though their own internal research found that

Chinese poultry facilities showed egregious food safety problems, including mishandling raw chicken throughout the processing areas, failing to perform E. Coli and Salmonella testing, and routinely using dirty tools and equipment.

(emphasis mine)

When these reports surfaced, Congress blocked the Bush proposal on Chinese chicken imports. American food giants howled in protest, and China filed suit in the WTO accusing the US of unfair trade restrictions. In 2010, not surprisingly, the WTO concurred. China slapped a high tariff on US poultry products, but sine American food companies are so heavily invested already in production facilities inside the country, they were still able to tap the countries domestic market. Nothing illustrates that better than the fact that KFC alone opens a new restaurant inside China every 18 hours, purchases one quarter of all chicken thighs produced in the country, and its parent company (YUM brands) earns 36% of all its operating profits from just the KFC and Pizza Hut outlets it operates in China.

I don’t know about you, but chicken is a little sketchy as it is, even when it comes from Arkansas or Tennessee. I don’t want to be eating chicken raised and processed in China anytime soon, especially without knowing about it. But it’s hard to doubt that it will eventually come to that. The rules by which members of the WTO operate, and the way trade disputes are arbitrated by that body, almost guarantee that member countries sacrifice public safety and national autonomy in the name of Free Trade and unfettered access to foreign markets. Meanwhile, the FDA has seen its budget shrink over the years, and as a result, its ability to inspect anything more than a tiny fraction of the food imported into this country.

2:36 PM PT: Update: If you are interested in food issues, you might find this article from Fortune about Cargill worth checking out. Cargill is, by far, the largest privately held company in the U.S., and rules the food industry:

http://money.cnn.com/…

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