China Syndrome

China Syndrome

The Wife and I were driving to dinner the other night, and we were talking about all the Filipino food we’d been eating, and so I asked her kind of grade school question, I asked, If you could eat only one ethnic variety of food for an indefinite period of time, what would it be? She elected Italian (which surprised me, though she made the point that there’s such a difference in northern and southern types, that there’s huge variety within the national cuisine, and she’s right, of course). I voted for Chinese. I don’t write about Chinese food much, but I usually find it full of stuff I like (veggies, fish), and although it’s a little weak on all-American beef, it makes up for that with a wide range of pork deliciousness.

So I’m a little concerned about the recent spate of bad news regarding PRC quality control. I haven’t had a Mattel toy since my parents bought me the Agent Zero M Camera Gun during the height of the Cold War, and there haven’t been Barbies in my house since the late twentieth century, but I do have a pantry full of Chinese noodles, spices, licorice, tea, etc. Though I’m sure most of this stuff does not contain lead paint, I’m still starting to wonder if it’s, you know, safe. And how about eating in my favorite Chinatown restaurants? Probably just fine, but, you know…you don’t know.

China is growing faster than government controls can catch up, and obviously, it’s crazy to trust any government agency completely (I also have a bottle of Vioxx in my medicine cabinet – how’d that slip by the FDA?), but recent news from the East is tweaking up my already paranoid consciousness regarding food safety. Is that so wrong?

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:Is that so wrong?

No. Quality control, politics, trade issues all make for murky issues with Chinese products. Add to that the inherent "murkiness" of Chinese food. What exactly is in soy sauce imported from China? Even if they told us, could we trust them that "soy" is really "soy"? (See my above answer.)

Which is why I'm with your wife, for similar reasons. One of the things I love about Italian food is the innate simplicity with which the ingredients are generally treated as well as the emphasis that eating in season will make for better tasting food. Fennel, is fennel, but only in season, and olive oil and cheese, while processed, are processed simply according to tradition. Given the emphasis on saucing in Chinese cuisine, and the ambivalent ingredients in the ingredients in the sauces, I think you're more vulnerable to the deficiencies in Chinese quality control.

Now, the Chinese food lovers will probably bristle at my statements, but the reality is that there is more than a smidgen of risk given the manufacturing controls (or lack thereof).

aschie30 wrote:

Which is why I'm with your wife, for similar reasons. One of the things I love about Italian food is the innate simplicity with which the ingredients are generally treated ... olive oil and cheese, while processed, are processed simply according to tradition.

Have you seen the olive oil discussion? (Kudos to Matt for pointing it out.)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007 ... table=true

nr706 wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

Which is why I'm with your wife, for similar reasons. One of the things I love about Italian food is the innate simplicity with which the ingredients are generally treated ... olive oil and cheese, while processed, are processed simply according to tradition.

Have you seen the olive oil discussion? (Kudos to Matt for pointing it out.)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007 ... table=true

NR, thanks for linking to this article about what in the late 90's was the "most adulterated agricultural product in the EU."

There are good companies and bad companies in China, just like in the rest of the world. Some companies simply make mistakes, while others knowingly put out products that may be unsafe. If you look at the Consumer Product Safety Commission website as well as recalls.gov, you can see exactly how many recalls there are that you weren't even aware of.

David Hammond wrote:

nr706 wrote:

aschie30 wrote:

Which is why I'm with your wife, for similar reasons. One of the things I love about Italian food is the innate simplicity with which the ingredients are generally treated ... olive oil and cheese, while processed, are processed simply according to tradition.

Have you seen the olive oil discussion? (Kudos to Matt for pointing it out.)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007 ... table=true

NR, thanks for linking to this article about what in the late 90's was the "most adulterated agricultural product in the EU."

Sure, that sort of fraud has been going on since the dawn of time and what you do, as this article shows, is that you police it, catch the people that are mislabeling, fine and/or other penalize them and institute new requirements. But this article doesn't change the fact that extra virgin olive oil, made without fraud and misrepresentation, is first-pressed olives. Now maybe high-tech machines are used by even in the most authentic, high-quality producers, but the product is the same.

China, on the other hand, in an effort to produce the absolute cheapest goods and gain an increasingly greater foothold in the global market, coupled with its notorious anti-competitive practices, secrecy and unwillingness to self-police at the levels of the rest of the world, has now opened up onto itself a can of whoopass. Look at the dog food scandal - the perpetrator was a supplier of wheat gluten and/or rat poison (depending upon who you believe) which is integrated into something else into something else and the whole purported purpose was to engineer a product that it could sell as having more protein. Obviously, it didn't think it would get caught. And now, the government is complaining that Americans are anti-Chinese and there's a conspiracy against them. Now, I'm not your average flag-waving American, but when you cut corners, and you're caught, you need to be more proactive and transparent about eradicating the very issues which caused them in the first place. And they have not. Which is why we now have lead on toys, etc.

As for the CPSC, I work with the CPSC on a semi-regular basis and while they're filled with good people, they're overtaxed and mostly focused on domestic products. There's only so much they can do to police overseas imports and the FDA, which is charged with policing food products, is well-known and probably agreed to be very inefficient in policing pulling harmful products from the market. In any case, I wouldn't rely upon the FDA or the CPSC to police Chinese products.

aschie30 wrote:What exactly is in soy sauce imported from China?

I only use soy sauce imported from Wisconsin.

David Hammond wrote:China Syndrome

So I’m a little concerned about the recent spate of bad news regarding PRC quality control.

An exc insight into the PRC (People's Republic of China) alimentary, business and social mindset at this link, from an American Madison Ave guy resident in China since 1994.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-doctoroff