More than a million Americans get sick every year from salmonella-tainted food. Better federal regulation could stop outbreaks. Madeline Marshall explains. a Vox video.
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McDonald’s in China has stopped using meat from a local supplier after Shanghai authorities halted the firm’s operations over food safety concerns. The meat processor is suspected of supplying meat well past its due date and mislabeling it. KFC and Pizza Hut in China have also stopped using products from the supplier, Shanghai Husi, which is owned by OSI Group of Aurora, Illinois.
More:
“Yum, McDonald’s in Shanghai food safety investigation,” Engen Tham and Adam Jourdan, Reuters
“KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s are hit with a new China food scandal: expired meat products,” Lily Kuo, Quartz
“China’s latest fast food scandal: McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut sold expired meat,” Lindsay Abrams, Salon
“China food scandal spreads to Japan as Burger King, Starbucks admit using tainted supplier,” Reuters via South China Post
Updates:
“Five held in China food scandal probe, including head of Shanghai Husi Food,” Brenda Goh and Paul Carsten, Reuters via 7 News/AUNews Yahoo
“Using expired meat in China was allegedly company policy for a US-owned supplier,” Lily Kuo, Quartz
“McDonald’s Japan Stops Sourcing All Chicken From China,” Chang-Ran Kim and Chris Gallagher, Reuters via New York Times
“McDonald’s China plans to continue using scandal-hit meat supplier OSI Group,” Nectar Gan, South China Morning Post
Further Updates:
“McDonald’s Food Supplier OSI Recalls Shanghai Products,” Liza Lin, Bloomberg News
“Some Chinese McDonalds are only selling fries and drinks due to a meat recall,” Lily Kuo, Quartz
“Fast-Food Scandal Revives China’s Food Safety Anxieties,” Anthony Kuhn, NPR
“McDonald’s Pulls Meat From China Restaurants,” Liza Lin, Bloomberg News
“Yum says China food safety scare hurting KFC, Pizza Hut sales,” Sruthi Ramakrishnan, Reuters
“Carving Out New Standards After China’s Fast Food Meat Scandal,” Zhang Yun, Economic Observer via Worldcrunch
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Canada has banned imports of Marmite – not because it’s made from British brewery waste, but because it’s artificially fortified with vitamins to back up dubious health claims, and food spreads in Canada aren’t allowed such fortification.
The stuff was imported by Brit Foods, a Canadian retailer specializing in British comestibles. The yeasty brown gunk is an iconic UK product, a cherished symbol of the Empire to which Canada once belonged. We have not been able to determine if the Marmite ban endangers Canada’s membership in the Commonwealth.
To avoid the appearance of favoritism in the upcoming independence referendum, Canada also banned imports of Scotland’s Irn-Bru, a ghastly orange-colored soft drink and symbol of modern Scottish identity. That color is supplied by Ponceau 4R, a pigment derived from coal tar which, unlike clubbing baby seals to death, is prohibited in the Great White North.
What is it that makes bacon so irresistibly delicious? Maybe it’s the unsanitary slaughterhouses, inhumane swine-raising conditions, or the generous doses of tangy veterinary drugs. Yum.
“Drop that bacon!” Martha Rosenberg, Alternet via Salon
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Sweden-based Ikea has 332 stores in 38 countries. Primarily known for assemble-yourself furniture, the firm also sells food products. Swedish Meatballs (köttbullar) are pretty famous, and IKEA’s are too, now that some were discovered to contain horsemeat.
Ikea’s equine meatballs were made in Sweden but first detected in the Czech Republic. The firm has reined in sales in 21 European countries.
Related: New catalog!
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Backyard Chickens are the new status symbol in hipster neighborhoods and upscale suburbs, a way to have pretty feathered pets and go green with local, fresh organic eggs. What’s not to like? Okay, aside from the noise and the odors and the expense and the cats and the authorities and the parasites and the thieves and Avian Flu?
Plenty.
“Many Germans only realized how much of the food on their plates is harvested and produced in China when thousands of schoolchildren in eastern Germany were afflicted with diarrhea and vomiting two weeks ago in an epidemic thought to have been triggered by Chinese strawberries contaminated with norovirus..”
“…by last Friday, 262 reports on Chinese products had been received in Brussels for 2012 alone. They included noodles infested with maggots, shrimp contaminated with antibiotics, foul-smelling peanuts and candied fruit with an excessively high sulfur content (see graphic).”
“There are few issues more deeply and universally felt in China than the safety of its food; after years of scandals on cooking oil sifted from gutters, glow-in-the-dark pork, deadly infant formula, and so on …. So it was grim news last fall when Chinese reporters uncovered a network of ‘special farms’ dedicated to providing Party leaders with top-quality vegetables, chicken, pork, rice, beef, fish, and tea oil. In the province of Zhejiang, for instance, forty ‘high-class eco-farms’ were said to have been earmarked to supply the land-resource department, water conservancy, agricultural units, and other government offices. (What are we to make of the fact that the offices receiving special food are exactly the ones overseeing the public’s supply?)”
— “Is a Clue to China’s Future on Its Dinner Tables?” Evan Osnos, New Yorker
Only three years after a poisoned baby food scandal, the Food Industry Council of China has instituted strict measures that will award grades to food and wine companies. Presumably, executives of companies that poison people will now have to stay after school.
The Economic Observer article by Zhang Xiangdong is summarized here.
Related: “‘Gutter oil’ dirties China’s food reality,” Li Hongmei, Xinhuanet English News
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In a stunning security coup, agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service seized 385 pounds of bologna sausage at the New Mexico border last week. Officials bagged the bologna bandit as he sought to smuggle illicit lunchmeat into sleepy Santa Teresa, NM (population 2607). The contraband cold cuts, with a street value of $2,700, were seized and destroyed before they reached the lunchboxes of innocent American schoolchildren.
Yet, for each bologna bagged at the border, surely six salamis slither across. Mr. President: where is our Border Wall?
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