Food Scares Related to China

British sweet maker Cadbury said Monday it ordered a recall of China-made chocolates over safety fears in the latest fallout from the ever-widening scandal over tainted Chinese dairy products. The company issued the recalls in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia after internal tests "cast doubt" on the safety of chocolates made in the company's Beijing plant, it said in a statement. "As a result of these tests… we have received results that cast doubt on the integrity of a range of our products manufactured in China," said the statement from Cadbury Asia Pacific.

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

Last week, it was reported that China had killed around 5,000 ducks found to be fed with a cancer-causing dye to make eggs look redder and appear fresher. The eggs were banned from sale.

Then Guangdong Province recalled all eel-based products when malachite green -- an industrial dye found to cause cancer in rats, and used as a disinfectant on fish farms -- was discovered in eels. The Hong Kong government conducted random tests on eels imported from China and discovered that 90 percent of them contained malachite green.

According to reports from both the BBC and Chinese national newspapers dozens of babies are currently being treated for malnutrition in two Chinese provinces after babies were given fake infant formula by their unwitting parents. The Xinhua news agency says that investigations are under way in Anhui and Shandong provinces.

The trust deficit is enormous and growing. Shi Ying, 50, a businesswoman, said she was so concerned about food safety that she found it difficult to shop. "I dare not eat farmed fish or meat because most are fed with growth pills or pumped with bad additives. I worry about vegetables in case they are tainted with pesticide. I even think twice about the water I drink because it might contain heavy metals."

Frozen breaded shrimp preserved with nitrofuran, an antibacterial that can cause cancer.

Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks announced a stop sale order in the state for all catfish from China after antibiotics banned in the United States were found in Chinese catfish. Sparks said 20 samples of catfish from China were collected for testing by the department of agriculture over the last few weeks. Of those samples, 14 tested positive for fluoroquinolones, an antibiotic banned by the FDA since 1997.

Japanese health officials, hounded by growing worries about the safety of the country's food supply, have a new concern: how to stop the proliferation of tainted weight-loss supplements that have killed three people and made hundreds more ill. Earlier this month, it came to light that three types of Chinese-made drugs billed as herbal medicines contained potentially poisonous chemicals. The government is scrambling to contain the outbreak, a difficult task because many consumers bought the drugs on the Internet or brought them back from China.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials said Wednesday they are checking all bulk shipments of honey from China after the discovery that some contained a potentially harmful antibiotic. There is no indication any of the honey has reached stores, the Food and Drug Administration said. The antibiotic -- chloramphenicol, or CAP -- is used to treat life-threatening infections but only when other alternatives are not available. The substance can cause a potentially life-threatening side effect in humans called idiosyncratic aplastic anemia.

News of that contamination came after the Chinese territory of Macau said it detected melamine at 24 times the safety limit in products from another Japan-based company, Koala's March cookies made by Lotte China Foods Co. The company is a member of a Tokyo-based conglomerate, Lotte Group.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended Friday that consumers not eat White Rabbit candy and that retailers remove it from sale. The agency also recommended avoiding Mr. Brown instant coffee and milk tea products being recalled by Taiwan's Car Food Industrial Co. Ltd., though it said it was not aware of any illnesses in the United States linked to either the candy or the coffee and tea products.

Nissin Cha Cha Dessert was the focus of a Sept. 21 warning. That product was made using Yili Pure Milk, in which melamine was detected by the CFS. The dessert is distributed in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.

A woman who fell ill after eating parasite-infested snails in a Beijing restaurant has been awarded 15,000 yuan (1,948 U.S. dollars) in compensation after successfully suing the restaurant. Ma Jie contracted Guangzhou angiostrongylus disease after eating undercooked Golden Apple Snails in the Shu Guo Yan Yi Restaurant on July 5 last year. She sued the restaurant for using contaminated ingredients and failing to ensure the food was properly cooked.

The contaminated pet food ingredients, wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate, were adulterated in China with the industrial chemical melamine, which would make them appear to be richer in protein. The recall was the largest of pet food in history, drawing Food and Drug Administration review, congressional inquiry and U.S. attorney investigations. Within days of the recall, the first lawsuits were filed against Menu and others.

Pickled vegetables have long been one of the most popular snack foods in China. However, according to Zhou, they now "strike terror in people's hearts." "Although pickled vegetables were first made in Sichuan, there is hardly anyone in the whole country who hasn't tasted this delicious snack," he writes. "But now when you visit Sichuan, your friends will say to you: 'Do you like pickled vegetables?' There's a factory in Chengdu that pickles the vegetables in DDVP. In the past, everyone in Sichuan would have pickled vegetables with their meals, but now the managers of some pickled vegetable factories say that, 'We don't eat any of these pickles in Sichuan, we sell them to people from other provinces.'"

California officials have revealed that the contamination got into the food chain. About 45 residents ate pork from hogs that consumed animal feed laced with melamine from China. Melamine is used to make plastics, but it also artificially boosts the protein level--and thus the price--of the glutens that go into food.

The Gansu Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision in northwest China issued an emergency notice saying San Lu's formulas for older babies contained enterobacter sakazakii as well as melamine, the Lanzhou Morning Post reported.

he U.S. Food and Drug Administration detained the imports, along with more than 1,000 Chinese shipments of tainted dietary supplements, toxic cosmetics and counterfeit medicines, the Washington Post reported.

Sea cucumbers plumped up with formaldehyde. Pork laced with clenbuteral, an asthma medication farmers use to make the meat lean. Moldy rice coated with carcinogenic chemicals to make it look fresh.

The Hong Kong government said in a statement Friday it found traces of melamine in the products, which were both made in mainland China.

Swordfish rejected as "poisonous."

For example, in 2001, new European Union (EU) regulations reduced pesticide tolerances for tea by 100 times, effectively excluding half of China's tea exports to the EU. This rejection caused more than $125 million in losses to farmers in Zhejiang Province. Several reports in the past year illustrate the magnitude of pesticide residues in vegetables grown in China:

In Shanghai, illegal producers made phony tofu cakes mashed together from gypsum, paint and starch, then fried in oil made from kitchen waste, swill and intestines, the Shanghai Youth Daily newspaper reported. The makers paid police about 9,200 yuan (US$1,100) a year to avoid inspections, according to the newspaper, which said it sent two reporters to pose as tofu merchants.

Consumers were advised yesterday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, the Port of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico. Although there are no reports of anyone being harmed by the toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the Chinese products had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” to children and people with kidney or liver disease.

Beijing banned the sale of turbot on Monday after detecting excessive amounts of carcinogens in the fish.

**Experts in Yunnan province found that residues of two highly toxic pesticides--banned by the government for use in vegetable production--were present in 34% to 100% of vegetable samples taken in Kunming and Baoshan prefectures from 1994 to 200l. **The Japanese Ministry of Health found pesticide residues in some vegetables imported from China that were four times higher than the agreed-upon limits. Pesticide production in China is also on the rise. In 2001, production rose by 9% to 696,400 tons, more than three times the 1995 total. **In 2001, the Chinese government found 47% of domestically produced vegetables had pesticide residues in excess of government standards.

Late last month, the FDA said it had traced the culprit in the deaths of more than a dozen cats and dogs in the U.S. to contaminated wheat gluten produced thousands of miles away in Jiangsu province, China. The wheat gluten ended up in pet foods sold in stores across America run by Kroger Co., Safeway Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and others. It is far from clear how many pets have been affected, but the number could rise. The FDA says it has received more than 10,000 complaints.

This is not the first time this candy was reported as a danger. But for now, I would avoid it for now.