June 16, 2007
Tainted Foods Are Daily Problem in Asia
By MARGIE MASON
AP Medical Writer

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - As Nguyen Van Ninh needles his chopsticks
through a steaming bowl of Vietnam's famous noodle soup, he knows it
could be spiked with formaldehyde. But the thought of slurping up the
same chemical used to preserve corpses isn't enough to deter him.

"I think if we don't see those chemicals being put in the food with
our own eyes, then we can just smack our lips and pretend that there
are no chemicals in the food," he said, devouring a 30-cent bowl of
"pho" on a busy Hanoi sidewalk. "Why worry about it?"

While the discovery of tainted imports from China has shocked
Westerners, food safety has long been a problem in much of Asia, where
enforcement is lax and food poisoning deaths are not unusual. Hot
weather, lack of refrigeration and demand for cheap street food drives
vendors and producers to find inexpensive - and often dangerous - ways
to preserve their products.

What's exported, for the most part, is the good stuff. Companies know
they must meet certain standards if they want to make money. But in
the domestic market, substandard items and adulterated foods abound,
including items rejected for export.

Formaldehyde, for instance, has long been used to lengthen the shelf
life of rice noodles and tofu in some Asian countries, even though it
can cause liver, nerve and kidney damage. The chemical, often used in
embalming, was found a few years ago in seven of 10 pho noodle
factories in Hanoi.

Borax, found in everything from detergent to Fiberglas, is also
commonly used to preserve fish and meats in Indonesia and elsewhere.
Farmers in various countries often spray produce with banned
pesticides, such as DDT.

"The people who do this want to make money. And if they're stupid and
greedy, this is a bad combination," said Gerald Moy, a food safety
expert at the World Health Organization in Geneva. "It's the wild
West."

The quality of Asian food has come under harsh scrutiny after toxic
substances were discovered in several Chinese exports.

Wheat gluten tainted with the industrial chemical melamine has been
blamed for killing or sickening thousands of dogs and cats in North
America. Fish containing pufferfish toxins, drug-laced frozen eel and
juice spiked with harmful dyes were among other unsafe products
shipped to the U.S.

Diethylene glycol, a sweet-tasting thickening agent also used in
antifreeze, has been blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in
Panama after the chemical was imported from China and mixed into cough
syrup and other medicines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has
halted all shipments of Chinese toothpaste to test for the same
chemical reportedly found in tubes sold in Australia, the Dominican
Republic and Panama.

The problems in Asia are not limited to China. Ice cream and sweets
made with the same industrial dyes used for coloring garments have
been found outside schools, and farmers have been caught dipping
fruits in herbicide, to add shine, a day before going to market.

In India, pesticides often taint groundwater and produce. Coca-Cola
and Pepsi have been dueling with a New Delhi environmental group,
which alleged it found unacceptable levels of pesticides in soft
drinks.

Street food is another problem. Millions grab everything from chicken
kebabs to rice porridge from unregulated food stalls where hygiene is
often poor. Unsafe preservatives are sometimes added, and vendors
typically use the cheapest oils and ingredients.

But the food is hot, cheap and tasty - a combination that often
overrides safety concerns in countries where many still live on $2 a
day.

"Asking for food quality would be a luxury," said Alex Hillebrand,
chemical and food safety adviser at WHO's regional office in New
Delhi. "They're hungry people."

Some countries, such as Thailand, are trying to improve domestic food
safety. In bustling Bangkok, where pots bubble and woks sizzle at
makeshift kitchens pitched on sidewalks, markets are issued test kits
that can detect up to 22 contaminants.

No one knows the extent of chemical-laced food in Asia or how it will
affect public health.

"It might be that you consume it today, but you don't see any effects
for 10 years," said Peter Sousa Hoejskov, a food quality and safety
officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Thailand.
"Some foods have issues that are developing over a long, long time and
others you have an immediate reaction."

China has faced outrage among its own citizens in recent years.
Whiskey laced with methanol, a toxic wood alcohol, was blamed for
killing at least 11 people in southern Guangzhou. Local media in
Shanghai uncovered the sale of phony tofu made from gypsum, paint and
starch.

At least a dozen Chinese babies died and more than 200 were sickened
with symptoms associated with malnutrition after drinking infant
formula made of sugar and starch with few nutrients. In another case,
lard for human consumption was made with hog slop, sewage, pesticides
and recycled industrial oil.

Some Vietnamese have been so shaken by news of tainted Chinese foods,
they are changing their eating habits. They are avoiding Chinese-made
products and paying more - up to $2 a bowl - for pho at an air-
conditioned chain restaurant with signs promising no formaldehyde or
borax.

"I am very, very worried about it," said Duong Thuy Quynh, 31, who was
eating beef pho because she was also worried about bird flu in
chicken. "I'm ready to pay more to protect myself and my family."

---

Associated Press writers Irwan Firdaus in Jakarta, Indonesia; Ashok
Sharma in New Delhi, India; Anita Chang in Beijing; and Vu Tien Hong
in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report.

In article .com>,
wrote:

> June 16, 2007
> Tainted Foods Are Daily Problem in Asia
> By MARGIE MASON
> AP Medical Writer
>
> HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - As Nguyen Van Ninh needles his chopsticks
> through a steaming bowl of Vietnam's famous noodle soup, he knows it
> could be spiked with formaldehyde. But the thought of slurping up the
> same chemical used to preserve corpses isn't enough to deter him.


We need to just ban all chemicals. Here is a site informing you about a
chemical that causes major problems:

http://www.dhmo.org/

If you look this up in Snopes, you will see that there is truth to this.

some stick-up-his-butt idiot cross-posted:

> Local media in Shanghai uncovered the sale of phony tofu made from
> gypsum, paint and starch.

Probably tasted *better* than genuine tofu.

Bob

On Jun 16, 9:20 pm, Dan Abel > wrote:

> We need to just ban all chemicals.

Would that include chemicals like, oh, penicillin?

Or just chemicals in the food supply? Technically, smoking meat
is treating it with chemicals.

Cindy Hamilton

In article .com>,
Cindy Hamilton > wrote:

> On Jun 16, 9:20 pm, Dan Abel > wrote:
>
> > We need to just ban all chemicals.
>
> Would that include chemicals like, oh, penicillin?
>
> Or just chemicals in the food supply? Technically, smoking meat
> is treating it with chemicals.

Did you follow the link I provided? Did you look it up on Snopes? The
main story on Snopes is about a junior high school kid who did a science
fair project on that dangerous chemical, DHMO. His project was titled,
"How Gullible Are We?". He surveyed 50 students. 43 favored banning
it, 6 were undecided and the other realized that DHMO was just a fancy
name for water.

The article I replied to had no numbers and no statistics, it just used
scare tactics. It discussed formaldehyde, and mentioned that it was
also used in embalming. A quick Google shows that formaldehyde is
produced naturally by the body.

On Jun 18, 12:02 pm, Dan Abel > wrote:
> In article .com>,
> Cindy Hamilton > wrote:
>
> > On Jun 16, 9:20 pm, Dan Abel > wrote:
>
> > > We need to just ban all chemicals.
>
> > Would that include chemicals like, oh, penicillin?
>
> > Or just chemicals in the food supply? Technically, smoking meat
> > is treating it with chemicals.
>
> Did you follow the link I provided? Did you look it up on Snopes? The
> main story on Snopes is about a junior high school kid who did a science
> fair project on that dangerous chemical, DHMO. His project was titled,
> "How Gullible Are We?". He surveyed 50 students. 43 favored banning
> it, 6 were undecided and the other realized that DHMO was just a fancy
> name for water.
>
> The article I replied to had no numbers and no statistics, it just used
> scare tactics. It discussed formaldehyde, and mentioned that it was
> also used in embalming. A quick Google shows that formaldehyde is
> produced naturally by the body.

No, I didn't follow the link (I hardly ever follow links on Usenet),
but a minute after I hit Send, I said, "DHMO. Dihydrogen monoxide?"
Doh!

I am suitably chastened.

Cindy Hamilton

Dan Abel wrote:
> In article .com>,
> wrote:
>
>> June 16, 2007
>> Tainted Foods Are Daily Problem in Asia
>> By MARGIE MASON
>> AP Medical Writer
>>

Why anyone bothers to reply to these one-hit posters from yahoo and gmail is
beyond me. They are the equivelant of musical one-hit-wonders, except in
some of the music cases they actually turned out a decent, albeit only one,
song. The first tip-off is we've never heard of this bozo poster. The
second tip-off is the massive cross posting. (Thank you, Dan, for not
continuing that.) But I think it's safe to say these idiots don't really
deserve a reply. They don't come back to check on the replies anyway; they
just hit and move on, like a plague of locusts.

Having lived in SE Asia I can tell you, they don't much care about
chemicals. But then again, this was a city where chickens were hanging from
hooks at the market with flies swarming all over them. Most of the fresh
fish wasn't iced down. They have built up a tolerance for that sort of
thing. That's why we had to boil our water initially (blech!) and then buy
a large crock-type filter for water to cook with, to which a few drops of
bleach was added (equally blech!) I didn't get to drink a nice cold glass
of water for 2 years!

Jill