July 13, 2007
Filthy Food? Blame China.
UPDATE!
Was the cardboard steam buns story a hoax ?
Was the cardboard steam buns story a hoax ? Anyone who has lived or traveled in China on a budget and taken chances eating from street vendors or dicey restaurants knows that a certain amount of mystery comes with your dish.
Usually what is not readily identifiable you simply eat around but sometimes you are hungry enough to ingest something that doesn’t really resemble food in the normal sense of the word. A plate of meat and veggies in Xi’An once worked my jaw with the meat’s leather like consistency and odd tastelessness but it did me no harm. After reading this expose about steam buns in Beijing made from pork-flavored cardboard I wonder if the meat was indeed leather, perhaps left over bits from a belt factory?
The cardboard steam buns highlight a blizzard of reporting on food safety problems inside China and with Chinese food exports. Many Americans are discovering that Chinese imports fill up both sides of the WallMart super center and make up a growing share of daily groceries. The meme on China food is that the problem is not the USA’s incompetent food inspection services (spread across numerous regulatory agencies and extremely understaffed) but with – you guessed it – China!
Beijing is responding in its usual heavy-handed way: the party boss of the Chinese equivalent of the USA Food and Drug Administration was executed and the national government is putting in place new regulations, outlawing classes of chemicals, and promising to publish daily reports of food safety during next year’s Summer Olympics.
In Washington, Anti-China blowhard Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) has added China’s “filthy” food imports to his list of all things bad and Chinese. Schumer’s response is to call for an “import Czar” to join the ineffective battalion of “czars” sitting in Washington offices and fretting about foreigners.
So would it surprise you to know that China is NOT the number 1 source of bad food imports? For the year ending June the FDA rejected the greatest number of shipments from India followed by Mexico according to the New York Times today. Indian food including shrimps and spices contained potentially lethal salmonella while a variety of Mexican food imports were considered “filthy.” China was number three on a list of the top 10 rejected source countries that included Denmark and Italy.
And the most serious case of food poisoning this week happened not in China but at the Taste of Chicago street fair where over 100 people are sickened and 10 hospitalized from possibly salmonella tainted cucumbers and hummus from a Persian food stall.
Labels: china, food fda, imports, salmonella, schumer, tainted, toxic
June 25, 2007
Mia Farrow’s Glass House Party for Darfur
Disappointed with fundraising totals after the op-ed she and son Ronan penned for the Wall Street Journal failed to galvanize international support to boycott the Beijing Olympics, Mia Farrow fought back last week with a new publicity stunt on the refugee crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan: an anti-Olympics torch relay race.
The race began last weekend at Ms. Farrow’s farm in Litchfield County, Connecticut, and was preceded by an outdoor party that got off to a rough start when actor George Clooney’s helicopter clipped some trees and crushed the caterers! “I remember Frank [Sinatra] had this thing about his aunt [Rosemary Clooney],” Mia murmured, “I actually got jealous – so I put a picture of her with a dagger through it in his dressing room at the Stardust. He never did say anything about that…”
Unperturbed, the ever placid Mia got the hook up from guest Martha (“I’ve been making money off Darfur longer than you”) Stewart on a super great holistic Sicilian eatery on the upper East Side. And in no time, o’douvres and pastries were rushed to the scene by a fleet of express Hummers.
The race route begins at Ms. Farrow’s Connecticut country house, makes stops at fashionable eateries and green businesses on its way to the UN building, and ends at Farrow’s 11 room rent-controlled apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan.
The toughest leg of the race would be the climb up flight after flight of stairs in The Langham, the location of Farrow’s famous apartment inherited from her movie star mother.
The race route begins at Ms. Farrow’s Connecticut country house, makes stops at fashionable eateries and green businesses on its way to the UN building, and ends at Farrow’s 11 room rent-controlled apartment overlooking Central Park in Manhattan.
The toughest leg of the race would be the climb up flight after flight of stairs in The Langham, the location of Farrow’s famous apartment inherited from her movie star mother.
“She’s got all the oppressed groups participating,” raved neighbor Nancy Kissinger, at the race’s kick-off party, “there’s a Shiite man and a Sunni woman, one of those long-necked ladies from Burma or whatever it’s called now, and a peasant from a volcano in Central America!”
Highlights of the afternoon gathering included a violin performance by ex-husband Woody Allen’s wife Soon Yi Previn (“Well, she is my daughter,” Mia exclaimed) and the return of son Ronan from Yale for the summer. “Aren’t you glad,” Mia cooed between suffocating embraces, “that mommy got you Darfur??!”
After hours of speeches and intense condemnation of evil multinationals and Steven Spielberg (“He’s a self-hating jew!” screeched Mia at one point causing a startled drink bearer to upset a tray of virgin ‘tinis), rifles were fired (“If only those were bombs dropping on Khartoum” I heard someone say) and the race was on!
Party-goers frantically scrambled to their cars, an assortment of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Hummers, and BMW SUVs, to drive down for the race finale. Mia ran to the caterer’s stretch Hummer – “I don’t drive myself!” she laughed and I got a chance to ask her some questions directly.
“Mia, why Darfur?” I said, quickly turning on my microphone.
“I never spend a day without thinking about it ... it's impossible to put Darfur out of one's mind,” she said.
“But what about your own country’s support of oppressive regimes in Nigeria, Guinea, in the Middle East, not to mention the abusive occupation of Iraq?”
After hours of speeches and intense condemnation of evil multinationals and Steven Spielberg (“He’s a self-hating jew!” screeched Mia at one point causing a startled drink bearer to upset a tray of virgin ‘tinis), rifles were fired (“If only those were bombs dropping on Khartoum” I heard someone say) and the race was on!
Party-goers frantically scrambled to their cars, an assortment of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Hummers, and BMW SUVs, to drive down for the race finale. Mia ran to the caterer’s stretch Hummer – “I don’t drive myself!” she laughed and I got a chance to ask her some questions directly.
“Mia, why Darfur?” I said, quickly turning on my microphone.
“I never spend a day without thinking about it ... it's impossible to put Darfur out of one's mind,” she said.
“But what about your own country’s support of oppressive regimes in Nigeria, Guinea, in the Middle East, not to mention the abusive occupation of Iraq?”
“Huh?” she responded looking puzzled.
“Don’t you think it’s hypocritical to blame China – a country – for the problems in Sudan?” I pressed on, “Are you aware that both sides are black, muslim, and have committed terrible atrocities – it’s not a black and white issue there. You are a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund but the UN says there is no genocide in Darfur.”
“Are you f*cking nuts?!” she screamed back at me and jumped into the back seat of the Hummer. “This is my genocide, dammit, Africa’s the future –bomb Beijing!”
And with that the car door slammed and she was off to the UN.
Labels: china, darfur, farrow, hollywood, hypocrite, mia, sudan
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