DailyDirt: Making Foods Yucky...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Nov 18th 2011 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The modern food industry has developed a lot of techniques to help distribute food efficiently and safely, but sometimes there are a few "bad apples" out there that make it look like the entire food industry is filled with unsavory practices. Here are just a few examples of some food issues that might have hit your plate.

There's possibly some "honey laundering" going on in the US -- where tainted honey from China is smuggled into the US market without proper country of origin labels. The yuck factor of this story almost triggers an urban legend skepticism... [url]
Those organic strawberries from California might not be as organic as you think. Apparently, just about all strawberry plants come from plant nurseries that are not "organic" because they use pesticides. [url]
Watching fish that were over-soaked in sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) as they cook is not very appetizing. Don't watch this video if you like seafood. [url]
To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: china, fish, food, honey, pesticides, stpp, strawberries

5 Comments

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Rekrul, 18 Nov 2011 @ 8:20pm

It doesn't surprise me that the US government isn't doing more to stop tainted honey from entering the country.

Back when mad cow disease was first discovered in the US, I remember reading a news story about a rancher who wanted to personally test every single one of his cattle in order to label them safe and was told by the USDA that he wasn't allowed to do that. They said that it would reflect negatively on the ranchers that didn't test all their cattle.
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Michael Ho (profile), 19 Nov 2011 @ 11:20pm

Re:
It must be pretty difficult to inspect (or even randomly inspect) every imported food for possible mis-labeling... If we can't scan imported shipping containers for stuff like terrorist explosives, there's no way to inspect all the food.
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The Devil's Coachman (profile), 20 Nov 2011 @ 8:26am

Re: Re:
So the solution is to just let people continue dying by the busload from contaminated imported foodstuffs? Brilliant! Gotta keep the excess melamine production profitable.
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JeroenW (profile), 20 Nov 2011 @ 12:51pm

oversoaked fish only happens once
I'd say. I mean when you see that you stop buying that brand or from that shop. Or am I missing something?
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Ted, 21 Nov 2011 @ 3:08am

The fish one is not scary, just a reminder that market fresh is the way to go. Frozen fish is always nasty.
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