Not even good enough for dog food

Not even good enough for dog food: Imported food from China loaded with chemicals, dyes, pesticides and fake ingredients


(NaturalNews) Do you really know what's in all the food you're eating
that's imported from China? If you don't, you're actually in good
company: The FDA only inspects 1% - 2% of all the food imported from
China, so they don't know either. Even when they inspect a shipment,
they rarely test it for heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs or other toxic
contaminants.

Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, added emphasis to this point as he testified this week in The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats,
saying, "We don't trust, for good reason, the Chinese to supply
ingredients for our dog and cat food. Why should we trust Chinese
exporters for the food that we are feeding our children and families?"

It's
a good question. Especially when, as Kastel adds, Chinese food is being
routinely found to contain "unapproved chemicals, dyes, pesticides and
outright fraud (fake food)."

Heavily contaminated food from China

As Natural News has already reported,
food from China is frequently found to contain alarming levels of heavy
metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury) and other contaminants.
Politically, China is a communist dictatorship where freedom of speech
is completely outlawed. Environmental regulations are virtually never
enforced. The culture is one of total deception where lying, cheating,
stealing or committing fraud to get ahead is considered completely
acceptable -- because that's how government is operated there. The moral
decay of China is
directly reflected in the alarming dishonesty of the food supply. (Yes, a
country's food exports will reflect its cultural and political
philosophies. Freedom produces healthy food. Oppression and communism
produces deceptive, deadly food.)

And
yet, even with all this being widely known, Chinese farms are rarely
inspected by organic certifiers. "U.S. certifiers are unable to
independently inspect farms and assure compliance to the USDA organic
food and agriculture standards that are required for export to the
U.S." explained Kastel in testimony. "These imports should not be
allowed to reach our shore until and unless we have a system in place to
assure consumers they are getting what they pay for. Just like U.S.
grown organic commodities, the safety of these products must be
rigorously overseen by independent inspectors."

Read Kastel's full testimony here.

Counterfeit ingredients are the new norm in China

Also testifying at the hearing was Patty Lovera, the Assistant Director of Washington, D.C.-based Food & Water Watch.
The news on food fraud out of China "is a steady stream of
controversies ranging from adulteration with counterfeit ingredients
like melamine in dairy products, to widespread outbreaks of animal
diseases like avian flu, and high levels of pesticide residues," Lovera
testified. "Just last week, news reports described a Chinese government
campaign to break up a fake meat operation, leading to arrests of more
than 900 people accused of passing off more than $1 million of rat meat
as mutton."

See Natural News coverage of the fake rat meat scandal here.

You are eating far more food from China than you think

Why does any of this matter? Because you're eating far more food from China than you probably think.

Not
only do retailers like Whole Foods sell "certified organic" food grown
in China, the vast majority of superfood powders sold in North America
use raw materials purchased in bulk from China. Nutritional supplements,
herbs and vitamins are often made using materials from China.

Not
everything from China is bad, but in our own lab tests here at Natural
News, we've been shocked to discover just how frequently products from
China are contaminated with metals, chemical solvents and pesticide
residues. We have rejected dozens of suppliers in our own search
for clean ingredients to use in our product formulations, and we've even
had to send back product that showed up at our warehouse and simply
didn't meet our stringent quality control requirements. (True fact: We
recently had to return several thousand pounds of goji berries to one supplier after discovering the product failed our quality control review.)

But here's the even scarier part in all this:

I am repeatedly told I'm the ONLY person asking these questions

When
I talk to suppliers of raw materials, I am repeatedly told that I am
the only person asking them for heavy metals tests, pesticide tests and
product samples to send to our own lab.

This happens over and over again. From this, I have learned there is virtually NO due diligence being conducted by natural products retailers.
Most retailers simply buy and sell, shipping boxes and moving product
while turning a blind eye to the truth about what they are buying and
selling. They literally do not care whether their products are
contaminated with heavy metals. They just want to sell, sell, sell!

Even more shockingly -- and I seem to be the only journalist reporting this jaw-dropping fact -- there are currently NO LIMITS set by the USDA for contamination of certified organic foods. A product may be USDA organic and still contain deadly levels of mercury, arsenic or lead. The USDA does not test or even regulate heavy metals in foods via its organic certified program!

So
you can be shopping at a famous natural products retailer and you might
pick up a product carrying the USDA Certified Organic logo, thinking,
"This is certified healthy and safe by the U.S. government." You are being lied to.
That product could be grown in China in a field of mercury runoff from
an industrial factory. It could contain ridiculously high levels of
mercury, arsenic, PCBs and even chemical solvents. You could be eating
pure death while paying a premium for it!

This is not an attack
on the USDA, by the way. Their organic certification program is
surprisingly good for the scope of what it attempts to accomplish. But
understand that USDA organic certifies a process, not a result.
At the farm level, it means foods are not intentionally grown with
pesticides and herbicides, but it does not say anything whatsoever about
heavy metals contamination of food production fields in China.

Massive organic food RAUD

In
truth, what's really happening right now on a global scale is a massive
organic food fraud. Food is grown in China and certified organic even
though no U.S. inspectors even visit the farms. That food is then
imported into the U.S. and almost never inspected. It's packaged and
sold at top dollar in natural foods retail stores, emblazoned with the
USDA Organic label.

But nowhere along the way -- except in
extremely rare cases -- is that food ever tested for heavy metals or
other contaminants. This is why Mark Kastel correctly states this food
can't even be trusted "for dog food," much less to feed yourself and
your family.

Make no mistake about it: China is a nation full of
immoral, unethical liars and deceivers. (Taiwan, on the other hand, is
very different and has a much stronger moral code as well as basic human
decency.) Remember: I speak Mandarin Chinese. I've lived in the Chinese
culture. I've traveled throughout Asia and even given numerous public
speeches to Chinese audiences. At the same time, I've investigated and
written about food and food safety for more than a decade. Very few
people are as qualified to tell you the truth about what's really in
your food coming out of China, and I can tell you that I don't trust it.

In
fact, the only way I will eat anything from China is if I subject it to
extensive testing and verify that contamination levels are acceptably
low. There are some great products out of China that are completely safe
and healthy. Certain medicinal mushrooms, for example, are produced in
China and are very clean. Some producers of goji berries are very honest
and clean. There are no doubt organic growers who are producing very
clean products in China, but these would be the exception, not the rule.
By default, we must all now assume that anything from China is heavily contaminated.

Almost universally, food grown in North America is cleaner and less contaminated. This isn't true 100% of the time, but usually so.

Toxic Chinese agriculture puts honest U.S. farmers out of business

The sad part about all this is that food from China is economically displacing U.S. and Canadian farmers
who are generally far more honest and ethical in their farming
practices. So while U.S. farmers are being put out of business for
following the rules set by the EPA, FDA and USDA, the Chinese farmers
are selling us contaminated, toxic "organic" food frauds produced by
breaking all the rules!

That's why I say grow local, buy local and eat local
as much as possible. And until China cleans up its act on food
contamination, do your best to avoid food from China. I don't trust it
unless EVERY BATCH is comprehensively lab tested and those lab tests are
made public.

Props to Cornucopia's Mark Kastel for having the
courage to lay a lot of this out in congressional testimony. Rest
assured Congress will never ask me to testify on food contamination
because I would describe a truth so horrifying that people would stop
eating for days...

P.S. The reason all your dogs and cats
are dying from diabetes and cancer these days is because you're giving
them highly toxic pet treats imported from China. They are loaded with
toxic solvents and industrial chemicals that cause permanent liver and
kidney damage, among other devastating side effects. You can find these
toxic, colorful pet treats sold at all the major pet store retailers. They are selling you PET DEATH and making a tidy profit doing so.


source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/040266_food_fraud_China_heavy_metals_contamination.html