Contaminated Formula

[katface]

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/17/china

The people who do these things for profit should be shot.

It is not the first time the Chinese have been involved in contaminated formula and or medication.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

hello katface, decided to stop in before Monday. Yes, I'm in the U.S.A. in the state of Texas. I'm just looking at a few other threads but I think I'm coming off as an old mother hen. Can't help it...just my nature.
Hope you will do some websurfing yourself on everyday products that you use...have grown up with. I can't remember what the article was but there was a list of 5 products (some I remember from my grandmother) that are all you need to clean, exterminate, etc. in a household. I know one was 20 muleteam borax.
Although the borax has its downsides it does state them. There are a lot of products (at least in the US that do not list completely or omit some of the side effects. I've found if it says to call a poison control center then red flags go up with me...or if it is NEW then I approach it cautiously. Some of the new drugs (I have a problem with the HPV vaccine they made mandatory in the state of Texas and are pushing to make it US mandatory) seem to good to be true. We know what that means.

[katface]

hi wehave - don't worry - "join the club" as we say over here - at the young and tender age of 40 i am a mother goose already !

yes, call the poison centre, that's a good one ! what isn't a poison these days, that's the question

did you see in the papers, the number of companies that have now found this stuff in their strawberry milkshakes ? all originate from the same Chinese dairies.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

OMG no I haven't. Have you got any links? I'll have to watch what my children are eating (they love milkshakes) and it's only too easy to dismiss the USA as being "safe".
There is always something to look out for. I remember when it was simpler...lead paint, acid rain, etc. I can't pronounce half the items I read on a label let alone know whether it is a toxic substance. (deep breath) I think I need a coffee.
Just finished doing dishes...sent son off to his night job and am preparing the two youngers for tomorrows school.
I never get caught up. I'm happy to stay just behind though..

[katface]

wehave, don't worry, the milkshakes haven't reached the US or Europe.

I read a Dutch company that buys fresh milk from China and then sells it as milkshake in Hong Kong has withdrawn them off the shelves.

Also Starbucks in China has stopped using Chinese milk in its products, so the dangers of fresh milk seem to be local.

I doubt there are any US or European companies that buy fresh Chinese milk, most milk over here is locally produced on our own farms, the same must be true of the US. I have never seen dairy here in the UK that originates from China (not yet any way !!!!)

I think if there was any danger of contaminated milkshakes here or in the US we would know about it by now.

Stuff like powered milk and formula are more of a danger, as they are not fresh products so they can be produced any where.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

katface, I wonder though what other products produced in China (items that aren't consumed as fast) contain melamine. We had a huge influx of it in dogfood. I guess I will have to see if anything I have on my shelves is from China. I'll just do more research into melamine and see what its uses could be.
Thanks for the info on the shakes though. I love shakes and so do my family. The problem is (and it is the same with anything) that if there is something wrong it is found out after damage has been done. Examples are the beef scares we had several years ago, the salmonella scares this past summer and water problems are always a possibility. Have a great day and thanks again for the heads up!

[katface]

wehave - don't worry about USA milkshakes, i think you are ok with those , just make sure the milk in them is fresh and local.

i buy local organic milk here.

yeh, the more i read about this Chinese thing the more upset i get. those poor babies and their parents

it also upsets me when i read the common myth that these bastard formula companies put about women not "having enough milk". through their unethical marketing they have destroyed centuries of breastfeeding knowledge and tradition.

Young, rural, poor Chinese women no longer bf because their mothers and even their grandmothers were told formula is better. even if they wanted to, their own mothers can't teach them how to and they don't have access to the correct medical info.

in the poorest parts of the world the cheapest, most natural way of feeding a baby has been replaced with expensive, artificial feeding. so expensive in fact most can barely afford it. i was watching a doc. about the philipines the other day, same disgraceful story there, mw's and doctors promoting formula to the poorest, most vulnerable young women for the sake of their own pockets.

generations of bf knowledge has been lost through sheer capitalist greed, and this in a country like China that has socialist roots. it makes me REALLY angry. these baby deaths, and 1000 still in hospital with kidney failure could have been avoided.

sorry for the rant, i find baby deaths so upsetting

[katface]

Tesco has withdrawn some of its chocolate products, so now it has spread to the UK.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

katface, baby deaths are nothing new in China. I'm not sure how long ago, maybe 20 years, China had several female infanticides. The first born inherits everything so if they had a baby girl they would kill it and try for a son. Now at adulthood the ratio of males to females is upset in China.
What kind of chocolate products? Please post as it could be in similar here in the US. It is always too late when one finds out about this stuff. I hope it wasn't anything people use often.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

I googled UK Tesco*recall chocolate? and got a slew of recalls from Tesco. Some not from this year but from last. One was a chocolate covered raisins though and that is something we can purchase at the movies from the snack counter. I'll have to curb my middle child on this. Luckily the other two don't like chocolate (makes me wonder who their mother is...just kidding) but that is something in their personality individual traits and their father and I love chocolate.

[misi]

apparently it is also small white chocolate mice that have been recalled along with some other sweets. The EU will be banning food imports aimed at children from China as from tomorrow and will be testing all products from china that contain at least 15% milk, they will also be randomly testing other foods for contaminants. looking at the food safety website, its horrifying the amount of food that is recalled. beans with plastic contamination, shoelace sweets with metal contamination and so many others.

[TheDevilWearsPrimark]

I agree re the toys, my friend bought magnetic fishing toy for her 8 year old and was shocked that the packaging said suitable for 2+ It was basically magnets on strings, and the magnets on the fish were very badly glued, one came off just from banging it on a table. She sent the whole thing to her local trading standards.

[katface]

misi - thanks for the info.

ds gets a chocolate treat every day after school (he is limited to one a day !), but have as of today stopped buying any chocs. until i know where they are made, or where the milk inside it comes from.

bloody awful all this, WHY do we have to check everything we and our kids eat all the time ?

wehave - it might be worth checking your local food standards people in the US to find out what they are banning from China too. if the EU is doing it, i bet the food people in the US will be doing it too.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

yes, will do katface. Unfortunately, the US standards (at least the inspectors) have fallen short of what is expected. I will just have to do the best I can and hope they do their jobs as well.
I just purchased a lunch container (one of those that looks like a backpack type material) and it actually had a label that said it was free from lead. Hmm...maybe I should toss out my childrens other lunch containers as they didn't test in the liners?
Just when you think you have all bases covered my youngest brought home a flyer from the school that one of the children (not in her class but at the school) has been diagnosed with MRSA. Gads!!! When is it going to end?

[katface]

EU has banned all infant food imports from China and any other products that have more than 15% milk content.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

Thanks for the input on the ban kat and the info misi. I'm going to look into all the chocolate that my family eats. I think the milk we get is US milk.
I am wondering if this is in any way a problem...there is a new product with royal jelly in it (shampoo) as China is a huge worldwide distributor of bee products. I know it is suspect for the bee population declining, or at least having a hand in it whether knowingly or not.

[misi]

any sensible royal jelly producer knows how to harvest this without damage to the hive. the biggest threat to bees worldwide is the beehive collpase syndrome thing that has killed off many hives in the US and has beed found in several european countries and has been identifed in britain too last year. this year many areas have seen a marked decline in bee numbers. where I used to get roayal jelly from was NZ and the company I used had it in their info that they actually increased hive numbers to be able to produce enough royal jelly which had many good knock on effects. not sure what china would be like though

[wehaveallbeenthere]

hi misi, KLRU (a funded station here in Texas) has a video about this subject called "Silence of the Bees" and China actually has a province (I don't recall the name) that has no bees now. They do all the pollination by hand (with little feather wands) because the hives have died off.
There is a theory that besides global warming (whether global or natural change in weather patterns) and other effect, China has contributed to the bee decline because of a parasite. They are the largest distributors of was, royal jelly and other bee products. The parasite it too small for anyone to see with the naked eye so it could slip by and like so many other disasters you never suspect or start to look for it until the damage is done.

[misi]

interesting, had heard and read about the US problem but not really china's role in this.

have just watched the video you mention

www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/introduction/38/

(lack of or will be some day soon) food for thought!!

[wehaveallbeenthere]

My suggestion is to cultivate mason bees. Only drawback is that they do not produce honey. It may not stop the inevitable but it may make a difference for a good bit until they can find an answer.

[misi]

ah, well ahead of you there. I built a small brick wall, well, brick ''lump'' at the end of my garden with crumbly mortar rather than solid cement mortar, and I have 3 bee houses around my garden where I drill out bamboo canes and glue them into a a box. very few 'honey bees' this year in my garden except when found dead on the grass but did have mason bees and another bee that I have not identified but have sent a photo to a friend of mine hoping he can identify it.

[wehaveallbeenthere]

Good job misi. I have noticed a big decline in all the pollinators. I haven't seen many butterflies or even mosquitos this year (the males don't suck blood only the females). It's too late to do much this year but I'm trying to prepare for next spring.

[misi]

I use those feather duster type things the chinese use too, well rather my son did this year, he went out and ''dusted'' the runner beans regularly as there were few bees around, we got a good crop until the mildew hit which was another problem this year with the wet weather we had strange thing was though, as the sunflower heads opened, I saw many bees (not bumble or mason bees though) on the flower heads, saw more in a day than all the rest of the year put together

[wehaveallbeenthere]

Is there any way to time cross plantings to "lure" pollinators to your crops?
My mother used to have sweet corn and tomatos and okra and bell peppers (other peppers too) and it seems everything was abuzz with flying insects. There were lots of garden flowers too at that time....and many spiders that would sit in the flowerheads.
Maybe planting nectar flowers alongside the crops would work?

[misi]

I companion plant all the time but as you have to rotate crops, sometimes the nectar plants are in bloom the other side of the garden!! this year I had my runner beans amongst the lavenders and mints, the sweetcorn and peppers amongst the nettles and the courgettes, tomatoes and potatoes in a new purpose built veg patch, all of which did not do very well but was expected as the site was where an old yucca tree had been grown so the ground was a bit hard even with deep digging and composting (it also didn't help that the sunflowers grew out of all proportion to last years crop. last year had F1 seeds and the sunflowers grew about 5 feet, this year, the seeds from those F1's grew to an average of around 9 feet so did block the sun a bit but I have 5 litres of sunflower oil now and I did get around 30lbs of toms that are filling the bottom of my freezer. I am also going to try essential oils next year. I have been told by an old gardener that sprinkling lavender oil and other flowery oils around your veg helps atract pollinators, not sure how as I thought they were attracted by colour/UV reflection, but will give it a go!!

[wehaveallbeenthere]

You are on a whole 'nother playing field than I am. It sounds like you are doing everything right ...and then some. I'm in heavy envy now that you have an "old gardener" to pick brains for answers.
I am doing my best just to try and save some bushes and grow some grass. Both aren't doing so well but I'll keep trying.
Here in Texas the soil isn't really good for anything except cactus. The gardens are all raised (being raised in Iowa near the Missouri river) so that was something new to me.
I decided to start small and grow things in Earth Boxes. At least I can try to keep them from the raccoons and the possum that eats anything that remotely looks inviting.
I did learn something today. When trimming an old bush...use eye protection and a mask. This bush hasn't been trimmed in 2 years and birds had nested in it. After getting all the dead stuff off I gave it a shake and found that it was really dusty on the inside....eeeewwwww. So all that work was followed closely by a bleachy shower. Next year I hope to have a fresh looking bush again.