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Living with food scares in China
Woman with baby outside children's hospital in Beijing, after China raised the number of children hospitalised after drinking tainted milk to nearly 47,000.
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: The stories that are in the news this week all kind of tie together in the same place. Whether it's the economy or politics, everything seems to wind up squarely in consumers' laps -- both here and overseas. Today the Chinese government ordered all domestic milk products made before mid-September taken off store shelves. Beijing's trying to get to the root of the latest consumer scandal over there, foods being contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine. It's one thing to read about what's happening, it's entirely another to be living it. From Shanghai, Marketplace's Scott Tong has this entry from his reporter's notebook.
Scott Tong: The playground in our apartment complex is the main gathering place for a very international crowd.
And when our three kids tear around with their friends from Finland, Brazil and Japan, it's not always in English. Meanwhile, we the parents trade stories about going local in China. Have you explored this alley yet? Or that new dumpling joint? Certainly some of us are more adventurous than others, especially with food.
But the toxic milk scare changes everything.
Erica Willert: I threw out my orange juice and apple juice that was local.
That's Erica Willert of St. Louis.
Willert: I threw out my salt, I don't know why, just salt came to mind. This week I bought all imported meats. And I did tell my children please do not drink any of the milk at school.
The point is, no one knows just how bad this melamine crisis will get. Already, the dangerous chemical has turned up in non-dairy products, like coffee and candy. Jocelyn Lemmila is from Columbus, Ohio.
Jocelyn Lemmila: We can't drink water from the tap. So we buy the big bottled water. Every time I drink water from there, I think, "do I know how the water got in here and if it's actually what it says on the label?" And yeah that's risky, but so are half the other things we're buying off the shelves. So you just don't trust anything any more.
Like most expats in China, Lemmila switched to imported milk from New Zealand or Australia. It costs twice as much.
Lemmila:
I personally don't want to buy imported products. But when things like this happen, I get scared back in my shell.
Lemmila has been in China for about two years, like us. But the longer-term veterans remind us that this just happens in a developing country. You either deal with it or leave. Dorte Bang Andersen of Denmark lived through a previous toxic milk scare four years ago. And the deadly SARS virus.
Dorte Bang Andersen: I have been here for nine years. I am definitely not surprised any more. I mean, they freaked me out when we had the SARS. I think after that, they cannot surprise me any more.
And she says, we wealthy foreigners can afford to buy imported milk. A billion locals can't.
Andersen: So many Chinese people, they are living in this. We are not more special than the Chinese people.
In the long run for China, this disaster may force the government to finally get tough about food safety.
My neighbor Wilson Cheng of San Francisco drops off his daughter at the bus stop.
Wilson Cheng: Personally, I think this is a good thing. Just like SARS, it makes Hong Kong a lot cleaner. I think this time it will make the food a lot safer for China. It will from milk, spread to other food products. It just speeds up the process.
But we are talking about our children's' health. So, Erica Willert and the rest of us expatriates take as many precautions as we can. And then we cross our fingers.
Willert: You go to the restaurants, and you eat the local food, you breath the air, and you hope for the best.
A bit of dark humor helps, too. The other day at a birthday party, Victor's Dad said he'll be drinking more beer, since the supply chain is more secure than milk. And Sammy's mom just assumes China will take a few years off her life, one way or another. So when tainted food happens, it falls within expectations.
In Shanghai, I'm Scott Tong for Marketplace.
Have you read the US State Dept H5N1 factsheet - did you see the July, 2006 version's wording? Please take your families and go home before you are caught by H5N1 Pandemic Flu year; three years of 'russian roulette' is enough 'luck' already. Keeping coverage of ongoing human H5N1 cases and cluster Containments quiet is going to cost all societies too much in the long run. Because China got control of the WHO prior to the Olympics, (and, right as a large h-h-h cluster in Indonesia should have raised the Phase alert to 4) (The Pandemic Phase was first unplugged, then re-written, and now 'switched' to have no remaining pre-pan phase; "3" is Now, and "4" now means Pandemic) the world is not preparing its citizens to cope with no vaccine; not enough antivirals purchased, no stockpiling critical needs against global suply chain disruptions, no full and fair disclosure. Please make sure you and your families are in the places you want to spend panflu year. See GetPandemicReady.org for how to prepare for what Dept of Homeland Security makes reference to in its "Best Practices and Model Protocols" document from April, 2007 (see pdf pp 6 & 7). Have you seen the age range and outcomes graph from "reported to WHO, confirmed" H5N1 cases? (The Flu Wiki has the graph in its right sidebar.) There are no 'mild cases' being missed; places like Indonesia are only enron-ing data to hide more bad news; to be an, "officially confirmed case in Indonesia this year, one must test positive for H5N1 3 separate days; if cases don't get Tamilfu started within 48 hours of symptom onset they die; if they have Tamiflu for a few days before testing, rapid tests read 'negative'; positive cases that later test negative never go into Indonesia's numbers. Not even the US is disclosing the full gene sequences of the H5N1 samples it has, nor of the atypical seasonal "Brisbane" flu deaths here (so we can't see if seasonal flus have picked up an H5N1 virulence snip; in addition to the Tamiflu resistance seasonal flus are picking up in nations that don;t use Tamiflu). Take a look at the "PFI Pandemic Flu Information Forum", for News, and, people who believe it is not true, "there's nothing the public can do so" officials mustn't warn them. The public trust has been betrayed; we could have been getting ready since the Individuals' page went up on pandemicflu.gov Oct. 2005, or, after the State Pandemic Flu Summits with HHS in 2006. FBIIC/Financial sector had their panflu exercise (with unscientifically low CFR) 12 months ago; in 2007, (and look what Paulson and his ilk did with their time and our money; last-chance grabbing). It is not ok for govts to lie to their public "to prevent panic" - they are only delaying panic, and, ensuring no Mitigation and no Recovery will be possible from this "unprecedented threat" (Ebola-high CFR Flu with 'unprecedented' mammal species range). Who benefits? Not the citizens, nor their children. What's going to happen when identifying or Containing finally fails, and Pandemic starts and preparation time ends and reaction time begins? "Consequence Management" doesn't quite cover it. We live in "interesting times". First things first. Educate yourself; (and don't go ask the sources who have chosen not to tell you all this time!) Make sure you're in a sustainable place. Go plant a garden. GetPandemicReady.org
Some of us in the U.S. (and in other countries) have been impacted by Melamine milk poisoning on a very personal level. Internationally adopted children from China, particularly the children adopted in the past two years, are currently being tested for Melamine kidney stones. Many of these children were raised in orphanages that relied heavily on contaminated formula. Children adopted as long as two years ago have been found to have Melamine kidney stones, even children who have none of the "typical" symptoms of kidney or urinary problems. Adoptive parents are currently wrestling with how far back malamine may have been used, how aggressively to pursue medical testing with asymptomatic children, what course of treatment is best if melamine stones are found, and what the future effects will be on our children.
Food scares in China.
Does anyone remember the colza oil scandal that killed 600 people in Spain? and does anyone know that when China was forbidden to export seafood to Europe in 2001 for alleged contamination by Chloramphenicol (antibiotic), some EU countries actually authorized exports contaminated foods with as much as three times the amount allowed for imports?
Indeed, China is still facing many food scares but the pace of improvement is 10 times faster than in Europe and can only get even faster now that those scares are made public in China.
