Substandard Foreign Foods in China
By LARRY ROMANOFF – September 20, 2020
Let's begin with a description of the practices of American food companies in the US, important to Chinese readers since these practices have already been exported to China and exist here. I'll focus here only on meat production, the chickens and hamburgers you buy at KFC and McDonald's. The Johns Hopkins Center and the Arizona State University in the US conducted a joint study a few years ago on drugs, chemicals and other contaminants in the US food chain, in this case dealing especially with poultry - the chicken you buy in the supermarket and at KFC. They found dozens of banned chemical substances in the chicken in supermarkets and fast-food outlets, in addition to bacteria that had become immune to antibiotics. Here is a brief explanation of American best practices in chicken production. This well-documented practice in the following paragraph was originally posted online by an unidentified commenter, but I have been unable to locate the author:
•Chicken
First, antibiotics are fed to chickens to stimulate their growth, then the poisonous arsenic compound Roxarsone, which is a proven carcinogenic, is added to the chickens' feed to make the chicken flesh the right color of pink. But these chickens are bred in overcrowded and filthy factory farms where they experience a great deal of stress which makes their meat tough and not very tasty. So the chickens are fed Tylenol (a painkiller and relaxant), Benadryl (an antihistamine) and Prozac (an anti-depressant) to make them happy. But now that these chickens are happy and sedated, they want to sleep all the time and not eat and not grow fast enough, so the Americans give them high doses of caffeine to keep them awake all night and make them eat.
So, the American "best practice", which the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) fervently encourages China to adopt, consists of this: first, we put the chickens into filthy, overcrowded and stressful conditions, then we drug them until they are numb and don't know they are suffering, then we drug them again to wake them up, then we drug them again to make them eat and grow faster, then we drug them with more toxic chemicals so their skin is the right color, then we drug them again to prevent them from dying from all the other drugs and the diseases that fill their cages.
But it's even better than this. What do you suppose the chickens eat, besides the drugs and caffeine? Well, the capitalist profit maximisation bible preaches that you cannot discard anything that might produce revenue, so American chickens are fed chicken and other animal excrement, ground-up animal parts, bones, feathers, blood, leather, dead cattle, and various diseased animal content. Normally a healthy chicken would die from such a diet, but this is the reason for all the drugs and antibiotics in the first place - to keep the chickens alive long enough to reach the supermarket where we ingest all these drugs that are still present. I will deal with American food safety in much detail in another article, but let's continue to enjoy American chicken a while longer.
On September 16, 2012, Health author Kathy Freston, writing in the Huffington Post, made reference to a New York Times article which detailed that half of all chicken sold in the US was contaminated with fecal bacteria and feces. Freston began with the following observations:
"Millions of Americans are exposing themselves not just to the bacteria from a chicken’s intestinal tract, but to everything else that comes in chicken feces. So the Centers for Disease Control recommends extreme caution when handling raw chicken, which includes meticulously cleaning and sterilizing kitchen surfaces that are exposed to the meat. [Fecal bacteria] will cause most people to suffer cramps, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. Some people will spread the disease to their families, while others will experience severe blood and kidney problems which can lead to death. I’ve often wondered why we would want to eat something that is so toxic, so I decided to go to the study’s source and ask Dr. Neal Barnard for an explanation."
Her article then quoted portions of her interview with Dr. Barnard. I'm including here a synopsis of Barnard's comments and some direct quotes. Barnard stated:
"Fecal contamination on chicken meat (in the US) is surprisingly common. Chicken producers are required to inspect only one in every 22,000 carcasses, so consumers really have no way to know what they are buying and eating. If you eat chicken, you are eating chicken feces much of the time. The presence of E. coli (i.e. fecal) bacteria means feces is on or in the meat. We wanted people to understand that when they buy chicken, they are buying, chewing, and swallowing feces in about half the cases. You’re eating dung. Chicken feces may also contain roundworms, hair worms, tapeworms, insect larvae, fecally-excreted drugs and other chemicals, as well as the more normal constituents of feces — bile, undigested food, etc."
When asked by Freston about purchasing organic foods in the US, Barnard replied by saying,
"Consumers might imagine that ... "organic" products are safer, [but] our test results indicate these assumptions have no basis. The so-called "organic" brands were tainted with feces, too. Feces on meats occurs in all brands and all stores at surprisingly high levels. If you buy chicken and bring it into your home, you can easily contaminate your hands, knives, cutting boards, and kitchen surfaces and very soon you end up infecting yourself with these persistent germs." Barnard's comment on contamination bears some thought. He is saying that the feces and fecal bacteria on the chicken meat will be naturally spread to the kitchen surfaces and to anything the meat touches, contamination which will not be removed by simple washing, but that to ensure thorough disinfection, anything touching the chicken meat should be at least sterilised with boiling water. Barnard said further that his medical group had been trying for years to help consumers understand that chicken in America was bad, "And if it’s the feces that finally convince people to stop eating it, that’s good."
On being asked how the feces got onto the chicken in the first place, Barnard replied, "Chickens are typically raised in crowded conditions, so it is easy for feces to spread from one bird to the next. In the transport boxes that carry them to the slaughterhouse, they spread feces even more. And in the slaughter line, the intestinal tract is mechanically ripped out of the body. So the chicken dung is splattering around, contaminating the equipment, the workers’ hands, and everything else. And then, right after slaughter, there’s the water bath. The part about the water bath is particularly eye-opening:" He went on to state that after the chickens are eviscerated, they are inserted into a water bath that is ostensibly for washing and cleaning the animals but in fact is designed to permit the birds to absorb water and increase their weight. Note this:
"Chickens are very absorbent animals. When you put them into the water bath to chill them, they gain a little weight. Since chicken is sold by the pound, over a period of time it’s a substantial financial difference to the company. The average broiler is about four pounds. If you can add a quarter of a pound of water, that’s very important to the profit. This "water" that Ms. Foreman was referring to is the chill bath the chickens go into after being eviscerated. It is sometimes referred to as "fecal soup"."
Barnard's observations on the 'fecal soup' do not provide a full appreciation of the problem. Most poultry meat, including that from chickens, is like a sponge and will absorb a surprising amount of liquid. In a Carrefour supermarket in Shanghai I see turkeys that were packed in Michigan in the US, with a label stating the turkey "Contains approximately 18% of a solution to enhance juiciness and flavor". That 18% of 'juiciness and flavor' consists entirely of contaminated water, of the fecal soup, absorbed into the bird's flesh prior to freezing. And it cannot be removed. Freston finished by reiterating that the chickens were placed in water full of feces and that, rather than cleaning the birds, the bath enabled the feces-filled water to be absorbed directly into the flesh of the chickens where it could not be washed away. Barnard responded by stating that is why slaughterhouses will never permit outsiders to see their operations, because in effect it would make you sick to your stomach.
Few people, even in the US, want to believe, or are even able to believe, how real and how serious this situation is. In November of 2016, the USDA issued a warning about washing poultry; a warning published the US media in preparation for the cooking of turkeys for Thanksgiving. The reports stated, "Whatever you do, absolutely DO NOT wash" the turkey. The USDA advised that rinsing a turkey "will not get rid of unwanted bacteria ― that is virtually impossible", and that washing poultry will simply increase the likelihood of spreading fecal bacteria everywhere in the kitchen. The advice was to simply take this bird, which has been soaking in a fecal soup, and quickly insert it into the oven, because high heat is the only means of killing the bacteria. You will still be eating the feces embedded in the turkey meat, but now it won't kill you. The USDA further advised to thoroughly clean with soap and hot water anything that touched the bird. This borders on being bizarre, but instead of the US health authorities banning the commercial production of this heavily-contaminated poultry, they are ignoring the big agra farms whose methods are responsible for the diseases, and are simply advising people on how to avoid serious illness from eating this food.
•Beef
That's just American chicken. Let's take a quick look at the famous American hamburger. Every time you eat an American hamburger, you are eating anabolic steroids, antibiotics and fecal matter. As one writer noted, "You are better off eating a carrot dropped in your toilet than eating American packaged meat." Feedlot cattle are fed shredded packaging, cardboard boxes, cement, and sawdust to put on weight. Cattle that are processed for hamburgers have access to only filthy food and water, and reports claim that until recently, they were fed millions of dead cats and dogs purchased from animal shelters, and that they still eat dead pigs, horses, and poultry. "Cattle are also fed chicken manure and excrement, which may contain tapeworms, Giardia, antibiotic residues, arsenic and heavy metals. Federal inspectors report that cattle that are visibly diseased, infected with measles, tapeworms, and covered with abscesses are routinely slaughtered and processed into meat." According to one study, of all the cows slaughtered for meat in America, more than 25% are worn-out, ready-to-die, dairy cattle, animals most likely to be riddled with diseases, cancers, and antibiotic residues. I have seen reports claiming that McDonald's relies heavily on these old dairy cows because they are cheaper, lower in fat, and their use permits the company to claim "All-American Beef". It gets worse:
In 2013, the US government had to order a recall of more than 8 million kilograms of beef that was contaminated with animal excrement, and not only contaminated but covered with feces, in many cases with "large chunks" of feces still adhering to the meat. This condition is so common, and so serious, that
Physicians from an American medical association petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to have all supermarkets either (1) label their meat products as "Feces-Free Meat" or else (2) have the supermarkets attach "biohazard labels" to all meat products in American supermarkets.
Nearly half of all chicken products sold in the US, and marketed by national brands, are consistently contaminated with feces, and in 2012, examinations proved that 95% of all chicken breasts sold in US supermarkets were contaminated with fecal bacteria. From all this, food-borne illnesses in the US are at epidemic levels, with between 75 million and 100 million cases each year of contaminated food and illnesses from consumption of animal products. In other words, about one-third of all Americans seek medical attention each year from eating diseased American food.
I think it's worth noting that China has never experienced 25% to 30% of its total population suffering illness from food contamination even one time, much less consistently every year. But, with luck, and with more American food and agriculture companies moving into China, we will soon be able to share these American experiences. In fact, they're already happening. But I have given you only a 'taste', if you'll excuse the expression, of the food quality typical of American companies. In a later article I will address at length the issue of food safety in the US and, after reading that, I promise (a) you will never again want to eat any food product supplied by an American company and (b) your fears about food safety in China will have moderated substantially.
•OSI and Husi
Moving to China, in July of 2014 we had the Jewish-American OSI food-agricultural giant in China exposed for repackaging expired and dirty meat on a massive scale extending for many years, complete with two sets of record books for deceiving the authorities. Company officials tried desperately to block the investigation, refusing entry to the plant by officials of the Shanghai food and drug authority for a long enough time to destroy evidence. Media reports said the authorities had to seize and destroy millions of kilograms of diseased and dirty meat, in a scandal that would eventually cover all of China. The Shanghai FDA also said Husi produced more than 5,000 crates of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, pork patties and beef steaks that were all expired and moldy. The garbage was primarily sold in China, the prime beneficiaries being of course other American firms - KFC, McDonald's, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Papa Johns, Dicos, 7-Eleven and more.
These firms were selling their culinary delights to infatuated Chinese who stubbornly refuse to believe that American food quality is lower than China's. Even more depressingly, OSI was listed by Shanghai's government as a "food safety model company".
It was a Shanghai Dragon TV report that collected and aired all the information, showing the staff at Shanghai Husi reprocessing meat that was rancid and had long since passed its expiry date, and claimed the firm also forged the production dates of its meat products. The TV video showed Husi workers picking up meat and hamburger patties from the floor and inserting them back into the processing machinery, and another worker handling expired beef and calling it "stinky". The TV footage also showed employees mixing expired and fresh meat in new packaging, and were overheard saying that if their clients knew what they were doing, the firm would lose its contracts. This was not a small thing since Husi was supplying so many thousands of US-branded restaurants. The Chinese health authorities assigned nearly 900 investigators to inspect the company's many sites before all the evidence could be destroyed. In Shanghai, many executives were arrested and the entire operations of OSI and Husi were shut down in China and not permitted to re-open. OSI claimed it had lost nearly $1 billion, but my guess is they still profited handsomely while their adventure lasted.
A spokesman for Yum Brands, the owners of KFC and Pizza Hut, said they were "shocked" that OSI and Husi had "illegal and dishonest behavior organized by management", and a spokesman for McDonald's said the practices were "completely unacceptable to McDonald's". I think we should talk about this. First, neither KFC nor McDonald's are exactly strangers to their own 'illegal and dishonest behavior organized by management', so I doubt anyone was really very shocked, and in my view the only 'unacceptable' part was getting caught. And it wasn't only Husi picking meat off the floor and selling it to customers; both KFC and McDonald's have been often accused of the same, and worse. But it goes deeper. For my part, I am a simple consumer and claim no particular expertise in meat or meat products, but I have no trouble discerning the difference between meat that is fresh and that which is nearing or past its expiry date. And I certainly have no trouble identifying meat that is moldy or rotting, or that smells. The management and staff of KFC, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, are dealing with meat shipments 365 days a year, handling, washing and cooking all that meat, and can identify bad product instantly. To claim otherwise is to lie. So, while I can't prove my claim, I have no doubt in my own mind that all these American fast-food restaurants knew precisely what they were selling.
Then, as always, comes the media spin. After having to destroy millions of kilograms of stale or rotten meat, a Husi company executive said, "Our company management believes this to be an isolated event." Or, even better, Husi company manager Yang Liqun, told Xinhua News Agency that "Husi has a strict quality control system". But as one newspaper reported, "a preliminary investigation by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration showed ... that what had been going on at Shanghai Husi was organized and planned, rather than based on individuals’ discretion." It had also been occurring for a long time. Several years prior, a former Husi employee exposed the company's supplying expired meat to all the American fast-food chains in China, but nobody cared even when he posted his revelations on the Internet. Rather than being apologetic, the company was defiant. After all the details of this enormous scandal were made public, Shanghai Husi placed a statement in Chinese on the OSI China website saying that for the Shanghai government "to define [our company's products] as 'questionable' ... is totally without factual, scientific or legal foundation." Husi also claimed in the media to be cooperating with the government's investigation, while the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration was condemning them and urging "more cooperation".
One reason this is important is that these American practices are being imported into China and forced upon Chinese producers. In 2013, it was discovered that a major chicken supplier in Henan named Doyoo Group from Zhengzhou had been selling sick, diseased, and dead chickens to KFC and McDonald's. Media reports said "chickens were being raised in sealed enclosures which were lit 24 hours a day at a constant temperature of about 36 C to maximize their growth, which caused the birds to become sick, with many dying prematurely. According to media reports, an official with Doyoo Group and employees of its suppliers said many chickens raised on the group's farms had to be slaughtered ahead of schedule after they became sick, with all the sick ones supplied to fast-food restaurants like KFC and McDonald's.
A chicken farmer in Hebi surnamed Yang said that of 17,000 chickens, 10,000 had died after 30 days and the remaining 7,000 were so sick they were unable to eat, but when he contacted Doyoo to express his concern, he was ordered to send the birds for slaughter and they were later sold." Another employee at another Doyoo farm said they raised 43,000 chickens but about 15,000 died at around 30 days and the remainder were again too sick to be fed, so they were also all slaughtered and sold. Farmers claimed Doyoo executives asked them to report sick and dead chickens "so the chickens could be slaughtered without quarantine inspection", meaning a deliberate attempt to hide the evidence from government health authorities, and claiming this occurred repeatedly. Media reports said "there were no facilities to properly handle dead or sick chickens at several farms that supply birds to the company. Instead, each of the farms was equipped with a freezing room to store dead chickens". And, in an act of defiance, the government website quoted an unnamed official with Doyoo Group as saying that "as long as the chickens are alive, they are not sick."
According to a media report, "The owner of the farm in Gaomi told CCTV that the chickens have always been in inferior health because they have to reach full growth in about 40 days.”Their hearts, as small as the tip of the little finger, wear out from the speed," he said. The chickens are fed large doses of antibiotics all the time, the manager said, because cutting it off would kill them immediately." The CCTV report also said that Liuhe Group and its companies "faked feeding logs for chicken farms and issued quarantine qualifications without doing any tests". In other words, they produced forged and fraudulent quarantine certificates. CCTV also reported that the Yum warehousing and distribution system was replete with not only practical issues but with fraud and illegalities as well - missing inspection information, "non-standard" quarantine certificates, and more. And then we have the lies. According to the China Daily, Sam Su, Chairman and CEO of Yum China denied that hormones were used in any of its chicken farms, and that the antibiotics scandal was just "an isolated incident". KFC issued a further statement that not only drew ridicule but that should have been punished by a public flogging, attempting to escape responsibility by stating, "If we find any illegal conduct by the suppliers, we will definitely deal with it seriously".
•More American Food Products
US companies constantly send banned genetically-modified foods to China. This occurs with pharmaceuticals, meat, fruit, vegetables, all kinds of consumables, creating serious health and safety issues. Often, entire shipments of goods are either returned or destroyed. Shipments of US beef are frequently returned because they contain prohibited matter from the brains and spinal columns of animals. These occasions are not accidents - the US producers know what they're packing. Under political pressure from the large food corporations, the US government permits the bulk of the dangerous animal tissue to remain in the food supply and be exported to China, while denying this is the case. But during regular inspections, the Chinese authorities often found these prohibited animal tissues in US meat exports, resulting in food producers both in the US and in 12 European facilities having their licenses revoked. The Chinese inspection authorities regularly discovered prohibited synthetic hormones and an excessive presence of antibiotics and antibiotic residues, in meat from what would qualify as genetically-produced animals.
The practice by American companies of repeatedly sending banned meat products to China, those containing animal brain and spinal column tissue responsible for the spread of 'mad cow' disease, and those containing meats from GM animals and a wide variety of banned chemicals, was so widespread that it finally resulted in Chinese authorities permanently banning all beef and beef products from the US. The total ban was implemented in 2003 and is only now under discussion for removal, having cost the Americans billions of dollars, and they still haven't learned anything. The Chinese authorities finally offered to discuss removal of the ban on American beef, but the Americans are demanding the right to continue shipping to China the same product content that caused the ban in the first place. Russia claimed to have had the identical experience with American meat producers, and recently, in frustration, banned all meat imports from the US - as China did. China recently ordered the destruction of a shipment of thousands of US oysters that were contaminated by bacteria and which had already caused illnesses in other Asian countries.
China also had to repeatedly cancel shipments of US fruits and other agricultural products contaminated by listeria, fecal coliform or other bacteria, items which had already caused many deaths and illnesses in the US. The banned additive clenbuterol, commonly known as 'lean meat powder', has repeatedly been found in many shipments containing thousands of tonnes of imported pork products from the US. Shipments of frozen ham from the US have been found to contain clenbuterol and further contaminated with mildew. None of these shipments are accidents. The Americans are fully aware of China's food laws, and even more fully aware of what they are packing. As always, the Western media remain dead silent on these issues, ensuring Americans remain ignorant of the facts.
The US media still constantly vilify China for the discovery ten years ago of melamine in powdered milk, but were silent when only recently China had to destroy almost 1,000 tonnes of substandard imported Western milk products - including Nestlé products - with 70% of these being baby formulas. Here is a (very) brief list of Western firms and their substandard products either made by them in China, or imported into the country.
Diseased meat at Wal-Mart. Chlorine, insecticides and pesticides in Coca-Cola - plus carcinogens at 14 times the level in the US, mercury in Sprite, insect body parts and insect eggs in Cadbury chocolate, chemical chickens, dead chickens, re-used cooking oil and substandard hygiene at KFC. Pink Slime, trash beef scrapings and ammonium hydroxide in McDonald's hamburgers, the banned carcinogenic dye Sudan I in KFC and Heinz products. Transgenic materials, excessive iodine and heavy metal contamination in Nestlé baby foods, toxic contaminants including arsenic, lead and cadmium, in various Western-branded baby foods. Excessive vitamin B2 in Heinz baby milk; substandard Western cheeses (Kraft), mislabeled and consisting in large part of wood cellulose; noodles, biscuits and baby formulas that had expired prior to shipping and contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria and sulfur dioxide; baby formula contaminated with ethyl vanillin and other flavoring additives in attempts to induce babies to develop a taste for their brand and reject others. Free formaldehyde in Lux soap and Dove Shampoo, harmful mineral oil and formaldehyde in Johnson’s baby products, as well as in Unilever and P & G products, SK-II cosmetics, carcinogens in Colgate toothpaste. Samsonite "Luxury Tokyo Chic" luggage handles with high levels of compounds known to cause cancer and birth defects.
American ice cream brands including Dairy Queen, ColdStone, and Baskin-Robbins have been found to contain alarming levels of bacteria, with DQ's Blizzard series setting a new record with 10 times the permitted safety limit. Dairy Queen was forced to close its stores for decontamination, but the media claim was that the closures were merely "to do some checks", and that the test results of 10 times the permitted level of bacteria "didn't mean Dairy Queen has quality problems". This claim tied for a first-place award with Coca-Cola's declaration that its chlorine and pesticides were perfectly safe to drink, and with Starbucks assertion that the toilet water was responsible for its unique coffee flavor. One hour after CCTV exposed illegal operations in its Beijing branches, McDonald's vowed to discontinue using the controversial ground beef filler known as "pink slime", which consists of garbage beef scrapings containing ammonium hydroxide, the chemical being necessary to kill the bacteria in the slime. In a rather deceptive twist of words, the Western media sanitised the affair by categorising the garbage filler as "beef trimmings", which has a very different meaning to any Westerner. McDonald's China said it would launch "an immediate and serious investigation" into the case. To what end? McDonald's would hardly be unaware of the ingredients it puts into its own products. The choice of words by both the company and the media were meant to trivialise and dismiss China's claims, implying that someone made a one-off mistake.
Danone is almost as famous in China as Wal-Mart for violating food safety rules, having been charged more than 20 times in the past few years, in two recent events suffering the destruction of more than 200 tonnes of "luxury" water brands for bacterial or chemical contamination. Moreover, Danone's Evian and Volvic brands of "luxury" natural mineral water have proven to be neither natural nor mineral, but simply plain water, and luxurious only in the range of pollutants contained - lead, arsenic, nitrite, free chlorine, cyanide, coliform bacteria, mold and excessive levels of many other bacteria. Recently, Danone's Dumex baby milk powder was declared contaminated with melamine, and that infants in several countries had fallen ill. Danone denied the claims but the jury is still out on this one. In another category, IKEA ceased the sale of various cakes imported into China from Sweden, after authorities discovered them to have high levels of coliform bacteria, in other words, fecal bacteria - feces. Not surprisingly, IKEA executives claimed they "conducted tests" on the same batch of cakes but did not find bacteria.
•The American Way
North American food production was not always as described above, but when Jewish investment bankers like Goldman Sachs and firms like Blackstone, the Carlyle Group, the hedge funds and similar, became involved with American MNCs in big agriculture, their greed and determination to maximise profits at all costs, inevitably led us to where we are today. The result is that small farms and production facilities disappeared and the food chain became dominated by Big Agra who established what are called "factory farms", those places where poultry are raised in small cages and fed a combination of excrement and medications and where larger animals are housed in larger cages and also fed excrement and medications. And that is why 25% to 35% of all Americans become ill every year from food-borne diseases, this not limited to meats but including every variety of American vegetables, fruits and nuts. Every year, the US experiences large recalls, sometimes covering the entire nation, of vegetables that are contaminated with the same E. coli, the same fecal bacteria, as are American meats.
Prior to the arrival of the Americans and the Jewish investment bankers in China, agriculture was small-scale and these so-called factory farms did not exist, with animals still being essentially free-range, not subjected to stress and not fed unhealthy food or drugs and chemicals. The arrival of the Americans changed all that, exemplified by Husi and OSI as I noted earlier. American big agra companies came to China bringing their vaunted "best practices" with them, and are slowly transforming China's agricultural landscape for the worse. American restaurants and fast-food outlets like KFC, McDonald's, Starbucks, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Wal-Mart will typically purchase only from these factory farms because that is where the prices are lowest, virtually forcing any Chinese firms to follow the pattern if they want to also become a supplier. The Americans have an expertly-crafted PR and marketing program that presents an entirely false picture of high standards and health safety when the blunt truth is that they are almost inevitably at the bottom of the list by all important measures, and this applies as much to companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi as to OSI, KFC and McDonald's.
There is another factor for Chinese to consider, that of food products imported from the US. If you are Chinese, do you believe that US food companies are saving all their feces-covered meat and their fruits and vegetables contaminated with fecal bacteria to sell only to Americans, while they save all their clean food for shipment to China? You know that isn't happening. At best, the food shipped to China is the same as that consumed in the US, and at worst is quite a lot worse, which is why the Chinese health authorities seize and destroy so many American food shipments.
Therefore, the first rule is to never purchase any foods originating in the US. American chicken and chicken products are the worst, followed closely by all other meats, then followed closely again by fruits and vegetables. This rule includes both fresh and packaged foods. The second rule is to never purchase or eat either fresh or packaged meats produced by an American firm in China, since they inevitably will be sourced from one of the factory farms to precisely the same standards of health and safety as described in the opening paragraphs above. This means not only American-branded meats in the supermarkets, but also to avoid altogether the American fast-food restaurants and supermarkets since they will almost always source their food from American or other factory farms and, as you have seen, will do so entirely without regard to either public health or safety.
Too many Chinese are too eager to believe that foreign food standards, especially American food standards, are much superior to those in China and that American foods are healthier and safer than those produced in China. They are not. When you purchase any American meat or vegetable products or go to KFC and McDonald's, you are, more than half of the time, "buying, chewing, and swallowing feces".
•Crabs That Glow in the Dark
Most readers will recall the nuclear reactor meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011. Fukushima has not gone away, but Americans are no longer aware of it because it has been totally censored in the US, covered with a thick blanket of media silence. Few people are aware that since the date of the meltdown those reactors have been discharging hundreds of tonnes of intensely radioactive nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean every day, and that the ocean currents have long since carried that radiation across the Pacific to pollute the entire West Coast of North America, particularly the US portions. There have been repeated reports of massive seafood die-offs and other problems from the Southern US, but these seem to never reach the media. With Japan, fishermen are "discouraged" from fishing anywhere on the Eastern side of Japan because virtually the entire Northern Pacific has been flooded with nuclear radiation. Japanese authorities refuse to discuss the matter, and the American Jewish media have imposed a news embargo on the topic.
I mention this for two reasons. One is that all seafood originating in the Pacific East of Japan should be banned in all countries, and consumers in every nation should exercise extreme caution in purchasing any Japanese seafood. The other reason is that (in China) the Americans are heavily promoting their Alaska King Crab and other seafood that originate in this same part of the Northern Pacific and that are almost certainly contaminated with radiation. This is one of the reasons for the publication ban; if the full details of Fukushima were widely known, the seafood industry on the US' entire West Coast would most likely collapse. The ban is therefore to protect Big Agra at the expense of the public. Given the circumstances of Fukushima's continued spewing of radioactive waste after five years, and the American ban on publicity and disclosure of evidence, all seafood from the West Coast (Pacific) of the US should be shunned. Canadian lobster is fine because it originates in the Atlantic Ocean and cannot be exposed.
This is a serious matter because both the Japanese and the Americans have been shipping this seafood into China, through the Kwai Chung container terminal in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong health authorities have for years allowed the imports of heavily-contaminated seafood into the city, apparently due to "deficiencies in safety controls" but in fact due to the political influence these large international agra firms have over the Hong Kong government. The South China Morning Post said the government relied on food importers taking the initiative on food safety. But of course, the importers do nothing. There was apparently only one instance where ten boxes of radioactive carrots were intercepted, and HK authorities admitted they had "no idea" if banned radioactive food were being sold in Hong Kong or being re-exported to the Mainland.
Canada is also guilty in this, for all the same reasons. Recently there were news reports of Canadian salmon and other marine life exhibiting open sores, cankers, and all the signs of radiation poisoning. The Canadian government's response was to cease all testing and blithely claim there was nothing wrong and nothing to see, after which Canada's Jewish-owned media imposed another news blackout and no further information has been available since.
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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.
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Larry Romanoff is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney's new COVID-19 anthology ''When China Sneezes''.
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, 2020
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