Nancy Huehnergarth | Food Safety News

China’s Food Safety Issues Worse Than You Thought

Nancy Huehnergarth — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 05:40:29 +0000

(Nancy Huehnergarth is a national food policy activist, journalist, coalition leader and president of Nancy F. Huehnergarth Consulting. Follow her on Twitter. A shorter version of this article first appeared in The Hill.) In April, I began an email correspondence with an American I’ll call Susan (she prefers to remain anonymous), who has lived in China for 15 years while working in publishing. She currently resides in Beijing and also lived in a small town in Hubei province. Susan came across our Change.org petition (325,000-plus signatures) asking Congress to “Keep Chinese Chicken Out of Our Schools and Supermarkets” and reached out to me. While she loves China and its people, Susan’s first-hand knowledge of China’s poor food safety practices leaves her deeply concerned about the prospect of American chicken being processed in China for consumption in the U.S. To provide consumers with even more information about how a weak Chinese food safety system poses a real threat to Americans, I have compiled a Q&A excerpt from my often-startling correspondence with Susan. Why do you think China suffers from such spectacular food safety problems? Food safety has always been an issue (in China) due to lack of knowledge about contamination and hygiene standards. Even in Beijing I can count on contracting food poisoning at least once a year, despite all my precautions. The problem is, buying anything here that is processed becomes a roll of the dice. Most Chinese believe the food safety system is thoroughly corrupt. Although there are protests, in general people say, “Mei ban fa,” or, “Nothing can be done.” This is the traditional Confucian attitude that teaches one to bend like a reed in the wind — never stand against it like a tree. I do know that almost everyone here believes that government officials have their own private farms to assure that their personal food supply is safe. People also widely believe that the government lies about its results in food testing to avoid panic and protest. Who staffs China’s food processing facilities? Chinese food processing plants are staffed by workers with little education — the people who are willing to work for the kind of low wages that make it possible to process U.S. chickens in Chinese plants and export them back to America cost effectively. Unfortunately, these mostly rural workers have limited knowledge of hygiene and sanitation. In the first few years of my life here, I spent time in different cities and towns, including Shanghai, Shijiazhuang, Qingdao, Qinhuangdao, Shenyang, Harbin, Dalian, Changchun, Yichang, Yidu, Wuhan, Xi’an, Yichun, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Ganzhou. I discovered that the vast majority of people are not yet familiar with the concept of a germ, virus or bacteria, or basic hygiene practices such as hand washing or avoiding cross-contamination of food. What about large multinational food corporations operating in China? Don’t they have sanitation and food safety standards equivalent to those in the United States? I don’t think so. Shuanghui International, China’s biggest meat products company (which purchased Smithfield Foods last year for $4.7 billion), has been plagued by constant reports here in this country of meat infested with maggots, customers succumbing to food poisoning, and random testing that shows illegal levels of bacteria and illegal additives such as clenbuterol in their meat. Negative Chinese articles about Shuanghui were pulled off the web in advance of the Smithfield purchase, but you can still read about the problems here. Are Chinese citizens fully aware of food safety problems in their country? How do they deal with them? The residents of Beijing are well aware of (food safety) problems. I can think of four ways in particular that their concern has become evident in recent years. The first is the proliferation and patronage of foreign import food stores. When I first came to mainland China, there was one such store in Beijing, little more than a hole in the wall, which catered entirely to the foreign population. Today that original shop has eight locations in the city. There are now four competing chains as well, and most have numerous full-sized grocery stores. Even as recently as five years ago, the vast majority of patrons were still foreigners. However, today these stores are filled with Chinese patrons, even though the product markup can often be 100 percent or more above what those items would cost back home. The second change has been in behavior when eating out. Anyone who can afford it avoids street food and cheaper restaurants, which are notorious for their poor quality. Food consequently often takes up to 50 percent of the average person’s monthly budget. Food poisoning is extremely common, and the rates of cancer in China are rising. I know personally three people under the age of 40 with liver or kidney failure. Gastrointestinal cancer is one of the most common cancers in China. People largely view this as unavoidable and a consequence of dirty food. The third piece of evidence is that Hong Kong and other countries are restricting the amount of baby formula Chinese citizens can purchase or carry out of the country. These laws were necessary because the Chinese were going abroad in droves and buying up all the baby formula. The final change has been the proliferation of balcony gardens. Anyone who has room in Beijing tries to turn their apartment balcony into a small garden since vegetables are among the foods most likely to make one ill. How do you personally deal with rampant food safety issues in China? I keep an eye on both the official government reports and as much independent media as I am able to access. I am very interested for my own personal health, as well as for the sake of my friends here. Since my roommate (also American) and I started eating only imported food, our health has improved dramatically. In particular, my roommate’s constant skin allergies and rashes have died down. We eat food from China only when out with friends — which we keep to once or twice a month. Most of the time we encourage our friends to come to our home for a meal instead. Whenever we eat out, we can tell. We generally both get headaches and often have digestive problems, and my roommate invariably breaks out in a rash within 24 hours. If we are able to find a restaurant where this does NOT happen, we keep going there until it does. Is it possible to purchase organic produce in China? Although “organic” vegetables are available here (little fruit), there are two serious problems with that. The first is that even government spot testing admits that approximately 30 percent of food labeled “organic” does not pass basic tests for pollutants and chemicals. Like most people, if they will admit to as high as 30 percent, I suspect the real number is closer to 60 percent. Greenpeace recently reported that upon asking Chinese organic farmers what “organic” meant, many of them answered: “I grow it by myself.” Why do you think many farmers in China use unsafe chemicals on the food they grow? The government limits the profit farmers can make off their goods in order to control inflation. As a result, many farmers have a hard time making ends meet, so they seek ways to improve per acre yields via chemicals. It is well-known (and feared) in the cities that farmers set aside a plot for their own personal use upon which these chemicals are never used. But plots that are growing produce to be sold are highly contaminated to make them profitable. Hence we have issues like last year’s exploding watermelons. An unknown chemical was added to watermelons to make them grow faster and bigger, with the unexpected result that they exploded in the fields. What do you hear about soil and water contamination in China with regard to the food supply? The soil and water are both widely and terribly contaminated. The soil study (the government) finished in 2010 had been locked away as a state secret until recently when they admitted that 20 percent of the nation’s farmland is contaminated — a figure that most who live here would suspect to be low as well as out of date. As to the water, I’ve read that the groundwater of 90 percent of our cities is contaminated to some degree while 64 percent of the groundwater in our cities is severely polluted. Unfortunately, all pollution numbers are ultimately educated guesses since the government tightly controls all such information. No one I know drinks tap water. Everyone, including the poor, drinks bottled water. I personally have an Aquasana water filtration system — one for drinking and a separate one for the shower — which renders the water clean enough to bathe in but still not what one would want for drinking. When I first came here, it was common for hotels to put a large thermos of boiled water in each room. Restaurants also served boiled water, and many people drank tap water that had been boiled. This is no longer the case. Can you believe there is fake bottled water? I switched to water filtration because government testing showed that 60 percent of bottled water was “fake,” e.g., bottles had been simply refilled with tap water and sold. Are there any big food scandals going on right now in China? Now we’re struggling with the issue of fake eggs. They are nearly impossible to distinguish before buying and far cheaper to make than real eggs are to lay. Fake honey is also a problem. Testing revealed that 60 percent of the honey sold in stores is not honey at all, merely colored glucose water. Of course, fake honey from China has been found in France and the U.S. as well. Based on your personal experiences and research, do you think it’s safe to process American raised chickens in China? I was horrified to learn that any food from America might come here to be processed. In my opinion, it will certainly return contaminated — even if nothing is added to it. There is no guarantee that the food will be kept at the proper temperature here, or that anyone involved will ensure the sanitation standards needed. What’s a good resource to learn about Chinese food safety scandals? The website “Throw it Out the Window” is a Chinese student’s compilation of all food scandal reports and articles that come out here every month. Running it through Google Translate will help you keep up with our food safety issues.

Why All of Us Should Be ‘Fed Up’

Nancy Huehnergarth — Mon, 12 May 2014 05:45:28 +0000

What does it mean when the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the world’s packaged food and drink industry, puts out a defensive press release about a documentary before it is released? I’d say it means they are scared, and, after viewing the new film “Fed Up,” I can understand why. Fed Up takes an unvarnished look at America’s unrelenting epidemics of overweight, obesity and related chronic disease by following the lives of several articulate and unusually introspective overweight children who struggle with bullying, their health and repeated attempts at weight loss. The documentary, which was executive-produced by Katie Couric (who also narrates the film) and Laurie David (“An Inconvenient Truth”) and directed by Stephanie Soechtig (“Tapped”), does not mince words. It places the blame squarely and fairly on a purely profit-driven food and drink industry and our government, which, instead of protecting consumers, has long been unusually solicitous toward food and beverage industry needs. As Harvard’s Dr. David Ludwig unsparingly points out in the film, America’s approach to the obesity epidemic has been a “systematic failure” because “we’ve placed private profit and special interests ahead of public health.” One of the first myths busted in “Fed Up” is the one that the food industry loves to perpetuate — the gluttonous, slothful obese person. Various experts explain the insanity of blaming individual lack of willpower in a food environment so toxic that 69 percent of America’s adults are overweight or obese. As University of California-San Francisco’s Dr. Robert Lustig states, “We have obese six-month-olds. Want to tell me they should diet and exercise?” Another myth busted is the presumption that thin people, thanks to their weight control, are healthy. Turns out that a poor diet, high in sugar, salt, fat and plenty of junk food, can cause the same serious health problems for trim people that we are seeing in the overweight population. That, in itself, should be an eye-opener to any normal-weight consumer of the standard American diet who smugly thinks that he or she is not on the path to chronic disease. Ultra-processed, empty-calorie food, with its irresistible holy trinity of sugar, salt and fat, is what Big Food does best, according to “Fed Up.” “We now have the science to show you can make food hyper-palatable so we come back for more and more,” says former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler. The fact that this nearly addictive, ultra-processed food is everywhere (including vending machines, cafeterias, offices, malls, supermarket end caps, corner stores, hospitals, magazine racks, gyms and schools) and is marketed relentlessly, 24/7, to both adults and children as young as two years old, only exacerbates the problem. Author and journalist Michael Pollan explains how Michelle Obama’s well-intentioned national campaign for healthier food had its legs knocked out from under it by the powerful food and drink industry, which pushed for more of a focus on voluntary agreements and exercise. According to Pollan, the First Lady was also drawn into a long, complicated discussion about making processed food healthier, but, as he points out, “Junk is still junk, even if it’s less junky.” One of the best segments in the movie is when Couric interviews Lisa Gable, president of the food industry-funded Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation on its much-touted, but unproven, claim that industry has eliminated 1.5 trillion calories from the marketplace. When Couric asks Gable what has been pulled from shelves to eliminate those calories, she gets a series of industry talking points designed to bamboozle, but never an answer. Turns out that the elimination of 1.5 trillion calories won’t make much of a dent regardless. It equals a mere 14 fewer calories a day for every adult and child in the U.S. The film’s focus on sugar as the obesity epidemic’s nutritional villain is the movie’s only weak point. Added sugars in virtually every ultra-processed food (particularly sugary drinks) have certainly contributed mightily to overweight and chronic disease and must be reined in. But so have refined carbohydrates, which also turn to glucose in the body. And portion sizes are now so out of whack (e.g., the large fast-food soft drink of 32 ounces) that over-consumption is the norm. The biggest concern is that, if you give the food industry a singular scapegoat — such as added sugars — they’ll find a way to manipulate the message, profit off of it, and still sell junk. Junk food will always be filled with empty calories and questionable chemicals, whether it’s low-fat, low-carb, low-sodium or low-sugar. The key to healthy eating is cooking and consuming real food that comes from the field, not the factory, and rejecting industry’s ultra-processed junk like the plague. The creators of “Fed Up” have ensured that message comes through, loud and clear, and the movie will hopefully spark a return to the types of meals our grandmothers used to cook and serve. “Fed Up,” which opened on May 9^, is a highly entertaining, eye-opening documentary that every American should see. In the movie, U.S. Tom Harkin (D-IA), who has waged a 30-year campaign against obesity and food industry manipulation, admits ruefully that “the deck is stacked against being healthy” in America. He painfully recalls a visit to a pre-school, where he found the children sitting in little red-and-white chairs that were labeled with the words “Coca-Cola.” When asked how he feels about the food companies he’s tried, often unsuccessfully, to regulate during his decades in the Senate, Harkin states what many of us have been thinking for years: “I don’t know how they live with themselves.”

Big Food and Big Ag Thwart Your “Right to Know” Anything About Your Food

Nancy Huehnergarth — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 08:59:02 +0000

The “right to know” is the rallying cry of more and more Americans who are fed up with our unappetizing, unhealthy, secretive food system. Consumers are demanding that Big Food/Ag draw back the curtain on unsavory industry practices, shocking nutritional information and unlabeled ingredients. So what’s industry’s response? They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep consumers in the dark. The “right to know” movement is currently on fire in California where Proposition 37, if passed, will mandate the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. Industry is spending millions to derail the measure because passage of GMO labeling in the nation’s most populated state will mean that GMO ingredients will be labeled nationwide. A federal menu labeling law, which mandates calorie counts on menus and menu boards at chain food establishments, is in the FDA rule writing stage, yet certain industry sectors are lobbying fiercely to be exempted. Pizza chains, movie theaters, groceries and convenience stores are demanding exemptions, even though Congress specified that these sectors comply when the bill was enacted in 2010. Shouldn’t consumers have the right to know, at point of purchase, the caloric content of menu items at chain establishments? The recent “pink slime” uproar, in which shocked Americans discovered that ammoniated lean finely textured beef (LFTB) was secretly being added to ground beef, is now headed to court. A review of the history of LFTB reveals that the beef industry was hellbent on ensuring that Americans would never learn that it had been mixed into 70 percent of America’s ground beef supply. The “pink slime” debacle is this year’s “poster child” for thwarting transparency. The consumer’s right to know is even being thwarted on America’s farms. In states where shocking farm food safety practices and animal abuses have been revealed (often through hidden camera investigations), industry ensures that ag-gag laws are proposed. In other words, once shocking abuses are revealed on a factory farm, state legislators are urged to criminalize undercover investigations on farms. Talk about obstructing democracy! Something is desperately wrong when Big Food and Big Ag get to call the shots on what the consumer does and doesn’t know about the food we eat. Ironically, the food industry preaches the mantra of “personal responsibility,” yet contradicts itself by thwarting the consumer’s right to basic information. How can anyone make informed decisions about food choices when industry works so hard to hide so much? If it were up to Big Food and Big Ag, Americans would know little about their food or how it’s produced – except for the happy, coercive marketing messages they promote 24/7 to entice you into purchasing more of their products. The right to know exactly what’s in your food and how it’s being produced should be fundamental in any democracy. That it’s not, and that Americans have to advocate for food system transparency, is testimony to the dangerous political power of the industrialized food industry.

The Masterminds Behind the Phony Anti-Soda Tax Coalitions

Nancy Huehnergarth — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 01:59:03 +0000

Deja vous all over again? Last month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a controversial cap on sugary drink portion sizes. If the proposal is passed, sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces will no longer be able to be sold in the city’s restaurants, stadiums, food carts and movie theatres. Now, a so-called “grassroots” coalition called New Yorkers for Beverage Choices has sprung up to oppose the mayor’s measure. But an investigation by the Republic Report found that the coalition is entirely the creation of the American Beverage Association and its high-powered issue advocacy firm Goddard Gunster (formerly Goddard Claussen):

The group bills itself as a “coalition of citizens, businesses, and community organizations who believe that consumers have the right to purchase beverages in whatever size they choose.”

But the “organizations” listed on the website simply run the gamut of businesses that sell soda, ranging from AMC Entertainment to the Chik-Fil-A. Goddard Gunster is not a group of concerned citizens in New York City. It is based in Washington, D.C.

If this is all sounding familiar to you, you’re not imagining things. Back in 2010, the New York Times reported on a “grassroots” coalition dedicated to killing Governor David Paterson’s proposed penny per ounce soda tax:

Enter New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, set up by the beverage industry, grocers and the Teamsters, who work as drivers and in production. The organization’s Web site describes it as a humble coalition of “hard-working individuals, struggling families and already burdened small businesses,” like Benny’s Pizza and Kay’s Deli. But behind the scenes, much of the strategic work came from Goddard Claussen, the public affairs company whose “Harry and Louise” commercials helped defeat President Bill Clinton’s health care overhaul efforts. The company was retained by the American Beverage Association to lobby against the New York tax.

Goddard Claussen was so proud of killing the NYS soda tax, that it highlighted its New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes coalition on its website with a full page write-up that boasted: “As part of a comprehensive outreach effort, we recruited over 10,000 citizens and 158 businesses to join New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes.” Shortly after this web page was discovered by the media, it was removed from the website. Goddard Gunster continues to promote its work derailing soda taxes. Subsidiary Goddard Claussen West currently highlights the California astroturf coalition it formed in 2009-2010:

GC coordinated with the national effort (now known as Americans Against Food Taxes) and created a California coalition, Californians Against Food and Beverage Taxes (CAFBT). CAFBT initially recruited hundreds of supporters throughout the state including organizations whose leaders and members could serve effectively as spokespeople for the coalition in the press and as messengers to key legislators. The California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Neighborhood Market Association and California Retailers Association took lead roles in that regard.

If you’re wondering about the national anti-soda tax coalition effort cited above, the Center for Media and Democracy’s Source Watch has this to say about it:

Americans Against Food Taxes (AAFT) is a front group funded by the beverage industry, which consists of major restaurant chains, food and soft drink manufacturers and their associated lobbying groups. It was organized by the American Beverage Association to fight a proposed three to ten cent tax on soda, sugary drinks and energy drinks to help fund health care reform in the United States….its extensive membership consists mainly of lobbying groups for packaged food and soda companies, chain restaurant corporations and the world’s large food and soft drink manufacturers and distributors, including the Coca-Cola Company, Dr. Pepper-Royal Crown Bottling Co., PepsiCo, Canada Dry Bottling Co. of New York, the Can Manufacturers Institute, 7-Eleven Convenience Stores, and Yum! Brands. Its domain name, www.nofoodtaxes.com, was formerly registered to Goddard Claussen public relations, based in Washington, D.C. The website’s domain registration has since changed to Domains By Proxy, Inc., which allows registrants to remain anonymous.

Ties run long and deep between the beverage industry and Goddard Claussen. According to her bio, American Beverage Association President Susan Neely previously worked for Health Insurance Association of America and “created and managed numerous issues campaigns, including the award winning ‘Harry and Louise’ TV commercials and campaign” in 1994, which was created by Goddard Claussen. With the beverage industry on overdrive to halt sugary drink taxes and now the Bloomberg portion cap proposal, it’s not surprising that almost everywhere a soda tax or portion cap has been proposed, an anti-soda tax or anti-portion cap coalition and website has quickly appeared. In Richmond, California, which will have a soda tax measure on the November ballot, the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes was recently created by the beverage industry. The coalition’s website domain is registered under Goddard Claussen Public Affairs in Washington. Anti-soda tax coalitions have also been created in the following locales. Note the similarities in many of the domain names: Texas: No Texas Beverage Tax Philadelphia: Philly Jobs. Not Taxes. Washington, D.C.: No DC Beverage Tax Washington State: Washingtonians Against the Beverage Tax Rhode Island: Rhode Islanders Against the Beverage Tax Hawaii: No Hawaii Beverage Tax Baltimore: Stop the Baltimore City Beverage Tax Chicago: Chicago Coalition Against Beverage Taxes Pittsburgh: No Pittsburgh Beverage Tax Vermont: Stop the Vermont Beverage Tax Kansas: Kansans Against Food and Beverage Taxes Oregon: Oregon Coalition Against Beverage Taxes Illinois: Illinois Coalition Against Beverage Taxes The deep-pocketed American Beverage Association, which is funded by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper/Snapple and others, has been successfully framing the sugary beverage tax issue across the nation with the help of astroturf coalitions created by Goddard Claussen/Goddard Gunster. Mayor Bloomberg’s recent portion cap proposal is getting the same treatment with the industry’s creation of New Yorkers for Beverage Choices. Until public health advocates can effectively undermine the legitimacy of these fake coalitions, Big Beverage will continue to have the messaging advantage. This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.