>
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chinafood18may18%2C0%2C2166175.story?track=mostemailedlink
>
> From the Los Angeles Times
> FOOD SAFETY
> China's additives on menu in U.S.
> It is the leading supplier of many ingredients in packaged food. Barring
the imports is difficult.
> By Don Lee
> Times Staff Writer
>
> May 18, 2007
>
> SHANGHAI - As the recall of tainted pet food mushroomed into an
international scandal, two of the largest U.S. food manufacturers put out a
blanket order to their American suppliers: No more ingredients from China.
>
> The directive from Mission Foods Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc., made quietly
this month, underscored consumers' and manufacturers' fears about the safety
of imported food ingredients after contaminated wheat products from China
killed and sickened cats and dogs in the United States.
>
> The problem is, what Mission and Tyson want is next to impossible.
>
> In the last decade, China has become the world's leading supplier of many
food flavorings, vitamins and preservatives. Like fingernail clippers,
playing cards, Christmas ornaments and other items, some food additives are
available in vast quantities only from China.
>
> China exported $2.5 billion of food ingredients to the United States and
the rest of the world in 2006, an increase of 150% from just two years
earlier, according to Chinese industry estimates. It is now the predominant
maker of vanilla flavoring, citric acid and varieties of vitamin B such as
thiamine, riboflavin and folic acid - nutrients commonly added to processed
flour goods such as Mission tortillas and Tyson breaded chicken.
>
> "It would be somewhat difficult to move away from all the vitamins in
China," said Monte White, president of Research Products Co., a large
supplier of nutrients for flour mixes. He said his Salina, Kan.-based
company was stepping up its testing of imported goods despite having had
"very consistent results" from China in the last five years.
>
> *
>
> Little oversight in China
>
> China's overall food safety record is poor. Use of chemical fertilizers
and toxic pesticides is heavy. Fraud and corruption often thwart what lax
controls exist. In recent years, U.S. officials have issued alerts about
Chinese honey tainted with a harmful antibiotic; Chinese candy containing
sulfites that can cause fatal allergic reactions; and infant formula missing
vital nutrients, which in China left a dozen babies dead in 2004.
>
> A small group of large manufacturers dominate the production of food
ingredients in China, but hundreds if not thousands of small, virtually
anonymous businesses - such as the two linked to the pet-food scandal -
operate in an industry lacking tough standards and enforcement.
>
> "Some of them are driven by profits; you can see dollar signs in their
eyes," said Jan Willem Roben, head of Vision Ingredients, a Shanghai-based
trader of food additives.
>
> In the U.S., major food manufacturers often don't know where all their
ingredients originate. Mission, a Texas-based unit of Mexican food giant
Gruma, would not comment about that or its directive, but said it was
working with its suppliers to ensure the products were safe. Arkansas-based
Tyson, one of the nation's largest providers of beef and chicken, did not
respond to interview requests.
>
> Many packaged foods contain dozens of items from around the world,
acquired through complex networks of traders and brokers, before they get
processed at manufacturing plants where companies have more direct
oversight.
>
> "Until now, companies just didn't care about commodity additives," said
Laszlo Somogyi, a retired senior consultant at SRI International, a
nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif. "But that might be
changing now. This was a warning," he said, referring to the pet-food
debacle.
>
> Somogyi believes tainted food additives pose a relatively low risk to
humans because such ingredients are used in tiny amounts in any given
product. Still, it wasn't until the pet-food poisoning that people learned
that melamine, an industrial chemical banned in foods in the U.S., had been
widely added to animal feed in China to artificially boost its protein
level.
>
> "The same thing could have happened in the human food chain," Somogyi
said.
>
> Chinese-made ingredients are probably found in every aisle of American
supermarkets. Consider that American favorite, the Hostess Twinkie. Of its
39 ingredients, at least half a dozen - such as vitamin B compounds, the
preservative sorbic acid and red and yellow colorings - are most likely made
in China, says Steve Ettlinger, author of the book, "Twinkie,
Deconstructed.."
>
> In an interview from New York, Ettlinger said he couldn't be sure where
Interstate Bakeries Corp., the maker of Twinkies, obtained those
ingredients. The Kansas City, Mo., company wouldn't help him with his
research, he said, and food makers rarely list the origin of individual
ingredients on packages. Nor do they necessarily want to know where it all
comes from.
>
> "The more you know, the pickier you get and the more it costs," Ettlinger
said.
>
> David Leavitt, Interstate Bakeries' vice president of snack marketing,
said he wasn't aware of any Twinkie ingredients made in China. But in a
brief e-mail statement, he indicated that Interstate was polling some of its
smaller vendors to determine whether they obtained any products from China.
>
> "This process involves gathering and verifying information from hundreds
of companies," Leavitt said.
>
> That process could eventually lead to a company such as Ningbo Wanglong
Group, the world's largest maker of sorbic acid - a preservative made from
natural gas that helps keep mold off baked goods and other products. The
14-year-old private company, located about 120 miles south of Shanghai,
produces 1,000 tons of the white crystals every month. About one-third of
that is exported to the U.S., said Li Ming, the company's office director.
>
> Less than a decade ago, such food additives were made mainly in Europe and
the United States. But China's looser environmental regulations, cheaper
energy costs and lower wages helped shift the industry to Asia. Ningbo
Wanglong's average salary is less than $200 a month. Giant food chemical
makers such as BASF of Germany and Dutch-based DSM have teamed up with
Chinese partners and cut back at plants in the West.
>
> Ningbo Wanglong says it sells sorbic acid for about $1.30 a pound,
including shipping charges to the U.S. The cost of the same product made in
the United States: about $4.
>
> For food companies, switching to non-Chinese vendors would almost
certainly increase their costs, though the move could give them a marketing
advantage over rivals.
>
> Li welcomed visitors to tour his company's 80-acre campus, where he said
400 employees, many of them wearing white gloves and gray uniforms, work in
20 high-tech facilities.
>
> "We have an analysis room, a quality lab and other quality control
departments," he said, adding that 70 workers have advanced degrees.
>
> But for every additive maker such as Ningbo Wanglong, scores of small
operations compete in China, offering their cut-rate goods in food industry
journals, at trade fairs and on the Internet. On the Chinese e-commerce site
Alibaba.com, at least 43 businesses claimed to produce sorbic acid, a
complicated compound that requires considerable investment and government
certifications.
>
> For many other ingredients, though, people don't need much more than basic
knowledge of chemistry and some simple equipment: a kettle, a scale and a
dryer.
>
> "The problem is that many small companies don't register their products as
food additives, thus avoiding supervision," said He Jiguo, director of the
food nutrition and safety department at China Agricultural University in
Beijing. Instead, he said, these companies classify their goods as nonfood
items. Many food additives also have industrial applications; citric acid,
for example, is used to clean boilers and etch concrete floors.
>
> He says Chinese government officials should boost enforcement and
penalties.. Currently, violators of food-safety rules are subject to fines
of no more than a few thousand dollars and a temporary stop order.
>
> But He doesn't expect any swift changes. Of the 1,750 government-approved
food additives, quality standards have been established for only about 250,
according to a report last year by Major China, a food-industry consulting
firm in Shanghai.
>
> "There is no clear food-classification system, no distinct definition for
the range that the food includes, no related regulation about residues that
additives leave on foods," the report said. "All these bring loopholes for
additives manufacturing and usage, give illegal traders opportunities and
affects customers' trust toward food additive safety."
>
> *
>
> U.S. inspection spotty
>
> Adding to U.S. consumers' concerns, inspection on the American end is
spotty. The Food and Drug Administration has said it checks just 1% of all
imported grocery items and food ingredients, excluding meat and poultry
products.. The agency didn't respond to interview requests for this article.
>
> U.S. food ingredient suppliers can only hope that the pet-food scare blows
over. Some managers say they are getting 50 calls a day from customers and
consumers. They are struggling to reassure them that the goods from China
are safe, promising more tests and tighter monitoring of vendors. But they
also say that American food manufacturers will have little choice but to
back away from demands to go without any Chinese additives.
>
> "They're going to have to compromise," said a sales manager at a major
food additive supplier who did not want to be identified by name. "At this
point, it's simply impossible."
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