WND: 67% of 2007 recalls were from China

The China recall brouhaha started with the pet food fiasco. Remember? That's when I started to get anal about reading labels...and that was just over concern for my cat! Since then we've learned all manner of careless or just downright despicable processing problems extant in China.

WorldNetDaily is reporting that 67% of 2007 recalls were China imports. Gives one pause, does it not?

I don't know about you, but I've become scrupulous about reading labels and knowing the country of origin of whatever we buy, especially when it comes to food.

We spend a fair amount of money each month at Whole Foods Market here in Dallas because it's a great store and carries superior foods of all types. But that doesn't mean you don't have to read the labels.

Just yesterday I was cruising the Whole Foods isles at one of their newest and premier stores located at Preston and Forest in North Dallas. My wife gave me implicit instructions to get some frozen sweet snapped peas....or something like that...(I've since destroyed the shopping list)....but all they had of that variety of frozen veggie was from China; and that was from Whole Foods own label, "365." Sorry...no can do!

I also shop a lot at Sam's Wholesale Club where they have great prices on almost everything. They also have great beef; it's always better than the average super market beef because it's all "choice" whereas most supermarkets only carry "select."

Sam's fish prices are also good, but wait...the salmon I looked at last Friday was from China and last I heard, China's seafood processing was done in disgusting conditions. No China fish for my family!

It's bad enough almost everything on the store shelves is made in China. I don't blame anybody for that; after all, we want cheap prices on everything, right? But when it comes to food, I don't want to eat something that has been scraped off the floor in some nasty sewer. No sir!

Organic farming is one thing, but processing food where organic filth is everywhere, well, that's quite another thing. As for me and my family we avoid food grown and/or processed in China. Read those labels!

Get this from the Eagle Forum:

In May, 900,000 tubes of toothpaste imported from China were withdrawn because tests showed that glycerine had been replaced by diethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze. This poisoned toothpaste has turned up in U.S. hospitals, prisons, and juvenile detention centers.

We import 80% of the seafood we eat, and China is our largest foreign source. The FDA says that a quarter of the shrimp coming from China contains antibiotics that are not allowed in U.S. food production and cannot be eliminated by cooking.

The FDA rejected 51 shipments of catfish, eel, shrimp, and tilapia because of contaminants such as salmonella, veterinary drugs, and a cancer-causing chemical called nitrofuran.

China raises most of its fish in water contaminated with raw sewage, and China compensates by using dangerous drugs and chemicals, many of which are banned in the U.S. The Chinese try to control the spread of bacterial infections, disease and parasites by pumping the food with antibiotics and the waters with pesticides.

Chicken pens are often suspended over ponds where seafood is farmed, recycling chicken feces as food for the fish.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to allow China to sell cooked (but not raw) chickens to the U.S. even though public health officials have warned for several years about a potential avian influenza pandemic. Doesn't the U.S. have enough chickens?

China exports more than 80% of the world's vitamin C, which is put in thousands of processed foods from fruit drinks to applesauce to granola, and is used as a key food preservative. There is no claim of contamination yet, but many worry about dependence on China, which has driven all U.S. competitors out of business.

Read those labels, folks!