FollowRecently a friend shared with me that a naive China apologist he knew had suggested that “Organic foods from China likely to be safer and better quality than those from U.S.” in reaction to the media revelations that Whole Foods and others are stocking their shelves with stuff from the Commie Middle Kingdom. In our book, Death by China, we detail how most of the organic food from China isn’t really Organic. In Chap. 2, “There is no Truth in Chinese Food Labeling” we quote a Chinese grocery owner disparing that only 30% might be real.
The whole China food chain is such a nightmare that It’s really hard to even know where to start, but . . .
Firstly, China is the land of lies with an ethically broken business culture where everybody knows your manufacturing partner is always going to try and “slip something by you.” Paul Midler’s excellent book “Poorly Made in China” details this “quality fade” process on the ground. And you’d have to be blind if you haven’t see all the big stories about counterfeit Apple stores, fake hand bags, etc. But many Westerners don’t realize this culture of deception extends to food and even medicine.
All Chinese know this and are constantly on guard for adulterated products. Many will only consume imported dairy products after hundreds of thousands of Chinese babies were sickened and several killed a couple years back when several milk producers figured out they could stuff Melamine, a chemical used to make things like resins for countertops, to boost the apparent protein content of their product. Thousands of American dogs and cats were killed by the same scam when Chinese producers poisoned our pet food with the same stuff pet food. At least 80 Americans were killed when Chinese producers of Heperin diluted the medication with a cheaper chemical. These people and animals died so somebody in China could make a few bucks. So seriously, WHY WOULD YOU EVER PUT ANYTHING INTO YOUR BODY FROM THIS UNCIVILIZED, UNETHICAL, COMMUNIST CLIMATE?
Secondly, while Shanghai and Beijing look like part of the first world and China is busy sending probes to the moon, most of China and its food production chain are still Medieval. I’m not saying all the Chinese farmers are like the city criminals involved in the scandals above, but the standards of cleanliness in rural China are like Europe way before the germ theory of disease was developed. Consider these photos I have taken myself in the REAL CHINA. THIS is where your Chinese food products come from, not the shiny buildings you saw on your MBA tour of Shenzhen.
A Peanut Oil Factory in Guangzhou
A School Cafeteria in Rural China
“Organic” Vegetables Being Washed in a Gutter
A Drainage Grate (on the same street as the vegetable washer and running into the same gutter) With the Skin of a Slaughtered Animal (Dog I think)
Typical Rural Town Butcher Shop
Sausage Being Made in a Chinese Village
I’ve traveled a lot of places in China and I’ve come home very sick and despite being careful I’ve had to go through a lot of ciprofloxacin to get rid of the bugs. I don’t want to eat it here.
Again, my point isn’t that these folks are all bad. In fact, many of them are very much “the salt of the earth” and rural China is very charming. This old farmer from a little village outside of Yongbei,was still plugging along with one leg and was a gracious host.In a lot of ways, it’s still just like it was when Pearl Buck wrote “The Good Earth” with hardworking peasants guiding wooden plows behind an Ox’s ass and living in mud brick homes. It can be down right romantic if you can overlook the fact that a black hearted, communist dictatorship is forcing hundreds of millions of people to live in a land out of time. It’s a feudalistic society with inadequate healthcare, where local party guys grab all the profits and kowtow to the commie party princelings in Beijing who make $Billion deals with multinational corporations to grab more American jobs. When a new factory pops up they ship these people’s kids off to work in the Dickensian sweatshops on the coast and the farm life just gets harder and lonelier.
What I’m saying, is that their concern for your family’s health are certainly not held higher than their own and their expectations are dangerously low. Mixed in with that distribution system are these outright criminals who would gladly kill you or your kid to make a buck and totally corrupt regulators who will look the other way for half that buck.
As for inspection, the U.S. FDA can’t look at more than 1% of imported food and they’ve pulled out of doing on the ground work in China. Meanhwile, Chinese regulation is one big joke. From labor to the environment to health and safety the patronage climate in the Chinese Communist Party is more of a system for moving bribes up the food chain than protecting food.
If you still have any doubts or appetite please check out our new “Food Channel” at our Death by China YouTube Channel. You’ll find out how Chinese food producers make Fake Eggs, Soy Sauce from Human Hair clippings, Cooking Oil from Kitchen Drains, Fake Rice from Plastic, and other yummy things!
Only when China is embarrassed does anything ever happen. This is because maintaining The Great Facade of Chinese – the reality distortion field that makes naive Westerns treat it like a real, civilized part of the first world rather than a brutal authoritarian gulag – is the most important thing to the Party. Being the folks they are, when they are embarrassed they find a scape goat and usually kill him or her. So, for instance, after the Melamine baby scandal China had the head of their FDA executed.
As another indicator of China’s overall ethical standards remember that the Communist Party government routinely executes officials, business people, and religious practitioners. In fact, executes more people than the rest of the entire world combined – mostly by shooting them in the back of the head while standing in front of a trench. Of course, they hide and lie about this figure, but while they are at it they sell the organs to Westerners for a profit!
Do you want your organic food to come from here?
Picture from Mail Online