Bad Food News

[tomturbomatic]

In a CNN article about today's stock market fall there was this:

Stock movers: Yum Brands (YUM), the conglomerate behind KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, reported disappointing earnings last night and lowered its guidance after its SECOND TAINTED Chinese MEAT SCANDAL in as many years. The stock dropped 5% today.
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It's not that we don't have enough food in this country. It's that the processors don't want to pay American labor so, in many cases, food that is grown or raised here is shipped to China for processing then shipped back. This does not affect the country of origin label which still shows the food as a product of the US. Of course, there is food produced in China in all of that filth and pollution with ZERO regulation, that is imported because it is cheap. That is all that counts now; how cheap is the product. Beware of eating at the above mentioned food outlets; I don't want to call them restaurants. Beware of what you eat, period.

 

[whirlcool]

I remember a few years ago grocery stores all raised the price of food because of "additional fuel prices for transportation". We all thought it meant fuel for the trucks that transport the food to the stores. Now we learn it was to transport the stuff to and from China.

Really wants to make you trust companies in the retail food environment, doesn't it?

 

[toploader55]

Really wants to...

Put your trust in the Government agencies that are supposed to be watching out for our health interests.

And I won't even begin to name them.

 

[ptcruiser51]

Long, long ago (80's)

I watched an expose' on PBS about nasty fast-food practices. What they reported was so very disgusting that I must have blocked it from my mind. I only recall that it was about McD's and BurgKing, but the others (Wendy's etc.) were supposedly OK. I vowed I'd never eat McD or BK again, and I haven't. I'll take my chances with a can of cat food if I ever get that bad off.

 

[danemodsandy]

Sadly....

....I think the way that our overdependence on overseas manufacturing will start to turn around is this:

I think there will be a high-profile tragedy involving multiple - or even many - deaths due to overseas corner-cutting on safety in the name of profits.

At that point, politicians will fall all over themselves enacting safety measures they should be working on now, and Americans will begin to demand that food be processed here. By then, of course, it will be too late for those who will have lost their lives due to corporate greed.

I know this is a downer to contemplate, but I personally think it's only a matter of time.

 

[whirlcool]

It's already happened.

The great dog kill off from melamine contamination of wheat flour that came from China happened in 2008. We lost our Black Lab Kurt, and it severely injured our dog Brandy. Tens of thousands of dogs died in this mess from 2007-2008. What's worse the more "super premium" the dog food was, the more melamine was in it.

Then they found that China had melamine in the baby formula being made in China. Thank goodness none of it was ever exported.

In case you haven't noticed, even the Chinese over here don't buy food items from China. Maybe they know something we don't? We haven't bought any Chinese food items that we know of since about 2006 or so.

Remember this, companies that make food for our consumption don't care at all. It's all about the bottom line. If they could find an ingredient that would only make a small portion of the public sick, but save them a lot of money they'd include it in a heartbeat.

 

[arbilab]

It's not just us 'filthy capitalists' they poison, they poison THEMSELVES. That melamine that killed our dogs killed their infants. They put the same stuff in baby formula. Then there was the antifreeze in toothpaste (well yer not supposed to swaller it).

Note the reaction though. Several of the plant's high operatives were arrested. USDA doesn't have anywhere NEAR that kind of authority. And US processors have shipped product contaminated enough to cause illness. Right now Texas has an outbreak of cyclospora in food and they still don't know where it's coming from.

In the 'dependence on foreign food suppliers' column, remember the lime shortage from last spring? Caused by an Asian plant disease, plus Mexican drug cartels hijacking what little fruit survived, it was declared over in June. But the prices are still 2x-3x what they were before.

California won't be helping. They are bulldozing citrus groves so that what little water they have can support what few trees they have left. Ah well, at least CA and AZ aren't lobbing artillery at each other, like you-know-where.

 

[washman]

We're part of the problem too guys

Sure the profit mongers source junk from China but at the end of the day who buys it?

Answer is YOU do. Like everyone else, you're scouring the shelves for the cheapest of the cheap. Most consumers care less where or how something is made, just so long as it is cheap.

Lesson, the chickens are coming home to roost and some are actually shocked at the fallout.

 

[maytagbear]

When buying fresh garlic......

Look for the roots!! Chinese grown garlic has its roots removed before shipping. US grown garlic has roots intact.

This all is another argument in favor of farmer's markets and local/regional eating.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[whirlcool]

Answer is YOU do. Like everyone else, you're scouring the shelves for the cheapest of the cheap. Most consumers care less where or how something is made, just so long as it is cheap.

In the case of the dog food, the melamine was in some of the most expensive dog foods on the market. So this wasn't a case of being cheap. However, at the time major corporations such as P&G, etc. were buying out these dog food companies and looking for ways to make them cheaper so they could boost their profits. That's how that mess began.

 

[washman]

People I work with

Will always choose the source from someplace else besides USA shrimp from Walmart vs Giant Eagle because its 4-5 bucks less per pound. Giant Eagle offers at times USA shrimp from the Gulf but of course, cheaper is better.

 

[circlew]

I haven't set foot in any of the three "YUM" (more like YUK) facilities in many a year.

 

[arbilab]

See above. The melamine petfoods were the 'high protein' ones, because in the most simplistic assay melamine is a protein. Shoppers/buyers/distributors didn't specify "protein that doesn't cause kidney failure". Nor did they test for it. They just put it in a bag, put it on a shelf, spent a million $ advertising it, and sat in their monogamy (sic) offices waiting for the money to roll in.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already have enough data to know.

 

[whirlcool]

That's exactly what happened. Dog food manufacturers bought wheat flour from the Chinese because it was cheaper there. Then the Chinese added Melamine to boost the protein content of the flour so they could sell even cheaper flour and charge more due to a higher protein content.

What happened to the dogs that were fed that food was the first thing was their thyroid's failed. Then they came down with cancer of some kind. Two of my dogs Brandy and Kurt both lost their thyroid's at the same time. My vet swore up and down it was just a coincidence, but the two dogs were from two different parts of the country let alone different lines. That should have told me something.

Then Kurt came down with a brain tumor and was gone within 5 days. A few months later Brandy came down with a level 4 mastoma in her eye socket. They were able to remove it successfully and save the eye. And after 6 months of chemo ($3,000) she now has been cancer free for about 7 years. She was eating 2 cups per day of Natural Balance dog food, Kurt was eating 4 cups. Different doses, similar response according to the amount fed.

We've looked at shrimp at Walmart before. It's usually from Thailand or China.
So we don't buy it there. Then there is gulf shrimp. We don't eat anything from the Gulf of Mexico. That BP oil spill didn't just "go away" like BP said it did. All the oil sank to the bottom of the Gulf where it is still contaminating the water. They just put out a warning this week not to go into the water on Galveston Island because several people have come down with the flesh eating bacteria that is resident in those waters. So we try to eat Alaskan fish where possible.