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Antibiotic-Tainted Seafood From China Is Making Its Way to American Tables |
2016-12-23 |
Imported farm-raised seafood from China is tainted with antibiotics and often salmonella, U.S. regulators say, and the tainted fish is making its way to American tables. Reason# 3,432,664 not to buy from China The problem is, Asian fish farmers often supplement their fish feed with feces from pigs and geese, which contain harmful bacteria and antibiotics that have a direct impact on the seafood we eat. According to the latest research, up to 90 percent of the antibiotics administered to pigs pass through their urine and feces. The U.S. Department of Commerce slapped a 112 percent tariff on Chinese shrimp, effective 2005, but unfortunately, Chinese suppliers have found ways to get around that. A 100% ban from Chinese farmed source food would help A new report from Bloomberg Business Week explains how pervasive the problem is, and how the Chinese are getting away with it. Beside one of those fish farms near Zhaoqing, on a muggy day in June, a farmhand wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat hoses down the cement floor of a piggery where white and roan hogs sniff and snort. The dirty water from the pens flows into a metal pipe, which empties directly into a pond shared by dozens of geese. As the yellowish-brown water splashes from the pipe, tilapia flap and jump, hungry for an afternoon feeding. China, helping the world build a better superbug! But the antibiotics aren't the only problem. Because the distribution networks that move the seafood around the world are often filthy, the products teem with bacteria that can't be killed by common antibiotics. In almost a third of random seafood samples collected in Shanghai from 2006 to 2011, researchers found salmonella, a major cause of gastroenteritis in people. A closer examination of the germs showed that 43 percent of the samples harbored multidrug-resistant strains of bacteria. After the U.S. antidumping tariffs on Chinese shrimp went into effect in 2005, a group of seafood executives gathered in Shanghai to find another way to export shrimp to the U.S. Many knew one another from when they'd all worked for Shanghai Fisheries, a large company overseen by the government. The executives agreed to create a venture that would focus primarily on exporting shrimp to the U.S., despite the new tariff. They would finance and control the company from China, but it would be incorporated in Texas. That was the beginning of American Fisheries. A full ban from those countries would help matters as well "When you talk about globalization...people move at different speeds," explained Bloomberg editor Megan Murphy. "Regulators move at different speeds and economies are moving at very different speeds and they will take their advantage where they can in terms of exploiting regulatory arbitrage...The antibiotics there have been introduced for a specific reason that is beneficial to that part of the economy. It's just that on the end product of the economy, on the more developed world side, that's where the problems are emerging." Murphy said that there might have to be some sort of "global oversight" over this particular sector of the global economy in order to fix the problems. |
Posted by:DarthVader |