I don't like the "Distributed by" labeling at all.  I've stopped shopping at ALDI because of this.  The manufacturing of private label/store label goods has sky-rocketed, and it's a business in itself.  We saw that from Menu Foods.  ALDI has mostly private label packaged goods, and who knows who the actual manufacturer is or where the ingredients come from??  You cannot even call an ALDI phone number to ask a question about the products.  I've dropped ALDI.  To %@&$ with saving money.  I'd rather know who makes my food and where the ingredients come from.

RE: Bar Codes & Country of Origin/Source/Manufacturing?

I always thought the first group of numbers was coded for the manufacturer's brand name and the last set was assigned to a particular product within that brand name.  Apparently, the following author said reading the bar code will reveal the country of origin?  Is there a difference between the actual bar code (stripes) and UPC numbers?

Here's what Federico D. Pascual said:

"BAR CODES: Because of the resulting notoriety of Chinese milk products, some merchants do not indicate in their packaging and labeling the country-source if it is China.

I have mentioned this in a previous Postscript, but will repeat it: Even without the country of origin indicated, buyers can determine the source by using the bar code.

]When the bar code starts with the three digits 690… 691… 692 through 695, the product is made in China. Taiwan’s bar code starts with 471.

The bar code of Philippine products starts with 480. Other countries: 00 through 13, USA and Canada; 30 - 37, France; 40-44, Germany; 49, Japan; 50, United Kingdom; 57, Denmark; 64, Finland; 76, Switzerland and Lienchtenstein; 628, Saudi-Arabia; 629, United Arab Emirates; and 740-745, Central America."

http://beta2.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=414298&publicationSubCategoryId=64

OK.  Now, I think I see.  The above is quoted from a Philippine publication.  An EAN bar code system (13 digits), which is used outside the U.S. & Canada, has a digit that indicates the country. 

Let's go to the EAN system!

Good one, catbird!      I'm laughing so hard that my pets are looking at me! 

What a dangerous mess these large corporations have been allowed to create!

Fresh mandarin oranges should be marked with the country.  Any canned or jarred fruits... I would suspect China, unless the company says otherwise.  During various parts of the year, even orange juice from large companies may come from the U.S. AND another country.  Is it Brazil?

If the fresh product isn't marked with country of production, I'd ask to see the produce manager.  I just found Brussels sprouts in a mesh bag that were unmarked.  The box all of the bags came in was probably marked, but that was no where in sight.  I didn't want to waste time tracking down the manager that day.  (Usually, I DO take the time to ask and have a clerk call and bother them just to keep them on their toes.)     I did NOT buy the BS, needless to say.  My poor BS never developed into tight little balls.  I'll still harvest and use them, but I certainly won't get the production I'd hoped for from 20 plants!    With the days being so short now, there's little hope of further development.

This is very upsetting.  Think of the other kitchen tools we might use: spatulas, spoons, etc.  Like petslave, I have a grater with a reddish plastic handle.  It's stamped "stainless steel, Hong Kong," but mine has no brand name on it.  Mine must be 20 years old or more.  I wonder if it's safe?

Here's another example of what danger exists when companies/people do not want to pay to properly dispose of their wastes!  They made money off of radioactive materials by including them with other scrap metal... sort of the pass-the-hot-potato game.  It doesn't matter where the toxicity goes as long as you're able to get rid of it (and not eat into your profits).

Didn't we used to send our discarded electronics and other junk to India by the barge-full to be stripped of metal components or anything else that could be reused or resold?  Do I remember a photo of children doing this??

"Melamine-free ads banned in Burma:

http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/1266-melamine-free-ads-banned-in-journals.html

Did we already see this about disposing of the melamine-contaminated milk?

...Tried to dispose of 18 tons and 6 tons ended up spilling into the river.  Citizens worried over the drinking water being contaminated, but were assured the levels were within the safe range...

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2008-11/05/content_7174437.htm

Here's someone else's unofficial list of melamine-contaminated foods:

http://creativeherb.com/2008/10/30/unofficial-melamine-contaminated-food-list/

One really does have to wonder about the strawberry mix recall.  There were certainly a number of strawberry-flavored products recalled around the world already: cookies, sour milk, pretzels, ice cream, etc.

Carolo, I also worry about the eggs, powdered eggs in addition to fresh.  Some bakeries & restaurants use the powdered form to save some money.  Yikes!

I think Mike Mozart, who does the melamine/poisonous food videos on youtube, has 3 videos total.  Is that correct?  I hope everyone here has viewed them.  I wonder if Mike can gather a collection to have some of his Chinese-made candy tested for melamine.   

From the article cited in 3cat's post #1311:

"Over the past year as many as 15 percent of newborns in Guangzhou City were diagnosed with birth defects such as multi-toe, Palestinian child's edema, congenital heart disease, and cleft lip and palate. The birth defects were caused by many factors, including environmental pollution, lead paints used in homes, home furnishings, poor lifestyle choices, and malnutrition."

Fifteen percent is a large percentage!

Thank you, past and present mods.  You've done and continue to do a great job.  So, a big thank you to you all!

Look at the attitude...  This first quote is from a Chinese embassy official last year.  Does anyone here think the Chinese businesses are going to clean up their acts or regulatory agencies there will start doing their jobs when government officials speak this way?  I don't think much has changed at all. 

I fear it will only get worse as more factories close there and people are scrambling to sell their "raw" ingredients to make a sale.  We're already blamed for their decrease in exports, which is true in part.  But the other part of the equation is that the factory workers asked for raises, and factories cannot meet price points to produce cheap products for us AND afford pay hikes to satisfy workers.  The spending habits of the Chinese middle class just cannot fill the monetary void of fewer exports to the U.S. & other countries with contracted economies. 


"A Chinese embassy official in Washington told the WSJ last year that “Americans should deal with flaws in their own system before criticizing China,” noting U.S. problems with spinach, lettuce and peanut butter."

and

"Last week, Japanese soy sauce and wasabi</strong> were found to be contaminated with chemicals. This week they’ve found more tainted Japanese products, including soybean sauce laced with arsenic and copper-containing coffee.

And product safety officials announced Tuesday that in the first seven months of this year, they had saved Chinese consumers from 2,700 shipments of potentially contaminated food and cosmetic imports, including infant formula from Australia, 36 tons of almonds and two tons of cheese, according to today’s China Daily."

Nov. 6, 2008
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/11/06/amid-domestic-product-safety-crisis-china-plays-up-problems-from-abroad/

It looks as though China is now trying to embarrass Japan because Japan called China out for melamine products.  Let's see how this turns out.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/china-says-japanese-produced-seasoned-soy-sauce-coffee-tainted

Just surfing "cereal recalls" and found a few of the hazards we've been presented with just in one product: cereals.  Really nice.

This first one is from 1988:

In 1988, too much iron and vitamin A prompted recalls by Kelloggs:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE3D7173EF932A1575BC0A96E948260

From April 2008, Malt-o-Meal recalls puffed rice & puffed wheat for Salmonella:

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2008/04/06/Malt-O-Meal_initiates_cereal_recall/UPI-75161207507539/

From July 2008, Quaker recalls Cinnamon Life cereal due to possible plastic bits found:

http://www.food-notes.com/archives/quaker-life-cereal/quaker-cinnamon-life-cereal-re.php

From 2007, Gerber recalls some organic baby food.  Cereal clumps will not dissolve in milk or water and could choke babies:

http://www.momjunction.com/members/JournalActions.aspx?g=163&m=45785

From July 2004, GristMill Co. (makes store-brand cereals) recalls cereal/granola due to Salmonella-tainted almonds:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_/ai_n11465508

Take your pick, folks.  How do you want YOUR cereal?  When you eat it, do you want to fall victim to a vitamin or mineral overdose, choking incident, crunching on plastic bits, or contracting Salmonella?  The possibilities are endless.  Ah, I almost forgot...  How about some scrap melamine tossed in?

What a sorry state our food supply is in.  Is food safety on any politician's radar?

Yikes.  That's a lot of brands of cereal. 

"Illnesses are associated with consumption of cereals that have an off-taste."

I wonder what cwap is in these brands?  Thanks, 3cat.

From 3cat: "What would you have to feed a chicken in terms of melamine to get the eggs up above the 2.5 ppm "safe" level
to Hong Kong's reported 4.7 ppm?"

Good point, 3cat.  Their feed, if it is just the feed... probably drinking run-off water from crop land (fertilized with melamine) used to grow their chicken feed as well.  Or drinking river water which is heavily contaminated with the melamine run-off.  I don't recall the name of the parent chemical name of which melamine is a part...  you know what I mean...

Do we import chicken feed and other animal feeds from China?

.......................

Thank you all for posting these enlightening articles.  I'm just popping in and out for a few days.  There's so much to read here.  Again, thanks for alerting us.  Our gov't is sure publicizing very little about what we're doing here to keep the food supply safe. 

So, we have DIRECT ADULTERATION with melamine AND INDIRECT, so to speak, by feeding animals (plants/vegetables) adulterated feed or fertilizer (melamine based) which comes out in animal products and is taken up by vegetables' root systems. 

The %#&@^s have poisoned EVERY FOOD GROUP!  Those who turned away from mela-meat in April 2007 and transformed into full or partial vegetarians are not safe either!  Protein powder, eggs, fish...

Something disturbing:  What is this "international level" of 2.5 mg?   Huh?  It should be ZERO!

Thanks again for keeping us informed.

"Meanwhile, the State media reported that a local government in northeast China has banned the media from publishing reports about the discovery of melamine-tainted eggs for weeks until the matter was exposed in Hong Kong late last week."

This is the kind of country/government we are dealing with.  They also suppressed the melamine milk scandal.  And, we're importing food from these lying crooks?

Four infants, at least that have been publicized, have been killed through deliberate contamination.

With all that's been revealed in the previous 80 pages... Anyone who thinks others are "just paranoid" or "alarmists" about poisoned food from China needs to reread those pages!