The US FDA cannot fix China's food safety problems. Time to give up that flawed polcy, even
as FDA office openings waste our tax money in China:

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_303340.html

Nov 17, 2008
Chinese wary after scandal 
... Mr Rao Pingfan, an internationally respected food scientist, said another major problem was that small manufacturers, many of whom lack safety training, dominated China's food industry.
'Illegal dealers use cheap substitutes with low nutritional value, you can see the greediness in their eyes. Total ignorance makes them fearless,' said Mr Rao, who teaches at Fuzhou University.
Mr Rao said the milk crisis proved an absence of standards and enforcement was a huge problem throughout the food industry.
'Fraud and corruption often thwart the effectiveness of legislation and government supervision,' Mr Rao said. 'Milk companies knew money could buy them exemptions from quality checks.' ...

http://www.irishnews.com/break.asp?tbrk=brk&par=brk&catid=5834&subcatid=642&storyid=386691

Breaking News17:39  WORLD:  China tops 'safety alerts' imports tableview list
17/11/2008
China remains the biggest source of imported consumer goods which trigger safety alerts across Europe, new figures showed today.

In all, 56% of all goods put on alert were from China – 615 alerts in all across all imported goods categories compared with 472 reported problems from China (47% of the total) in 2007.

A Commission statement said: “This increase was partially caused by the fact that many of the products that had been notified in the past from unknown origin were, due to more effective market surveillance activities, notified in 2008 as products of Chinese origin.”

Big European, US, Chinese product and food safety conference this week in Belgium. Nancy Nord is representing the US (whoohoo). At least the Europeans are admitting that the problem coming from China is even bigger than they originally thought. Sounds like the advice
being given is along the lines of "Tut, tut, China, now do better." Isn't exactly confidence inspiring.

eta: article on European safety meeting. I really hope contact with the US and China does not bring European Union safety standards down, but
rather raises those of the backwards US:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/17/business/safety.php

International Herald Tribune is the international edition of the New York Times. Nice to see
in mainstream media print what everyone on Itchmo has been saying since about June of 2007:

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=17862064

China, America and melamine
By James E. McWilliams
James E. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos, is the author of "American Pests: The Losing War on Insects From Colonial Times to DDT."

Sunday, November 16, 2008
AUSTIN, Texas:

China's food supply appears to be awash in the industrial chemical melamine. Dangerous levels have been detected not only in milk and eggs, but also in chicken feed and wheat gluten, meaning that melamine is almost impossible to avoid in processed foods. Melamine in baby formula has killed at least four infants in China and sickened tens of thousands more.

In response, the United States has blasted lax Chinese regulations, while the Food and Drug Administration, in a rare move, announced last week that Chinese food products containing milk would be detained at the border until they were proved safe.

For all the outrage about Chinese melamine, what American consumers and government agencies have studiously failed to scrutinize is the place of melamine in America's own food system. In casting stones, we've forgotten that our house has its own exposed glass. ...

But these figures obscure more than they reveal. First, while adults eat about one-fortieth of their weight every day, toddlers consume closer to one-tenth. Although scientists haven't measured the differential impact of melamine on infants versus adults, it's likely that this intensified ratio would at least double (if not quadruple) the impact of legal levels of melamine on toddlers.

This doubled exposure might not land a child in the hospital, but it could certainly contribute to the long-term kidney and liver problems that we know are caused by chronic exposure to melamine.

On a more concrete note, melamine not only has widespread industrial applications, but is also used to buttress the foundation of American agriculture.

Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil, thereby allowing the farmer to get more nutrient bang for the fertilizer buck. But the government doesn't regulate how much melamine is applied to the soil. This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil.

A related area of agricultural concern is animal feed. Chinese eggs seized last month in Hong Kong, for instance, contained elevated levels of melamine because of the melamine-laden wheat gluten used in the feed for the chickens that produced the eggs.

To think American consumers are immune to this unscrupulous behavior is to ignore the Byzantine reality of the global gluten trade. Tracking the flow of wheat gluten around the world is like trying to contain a drop of dye in a churning whirlpool.

More ominous, the United States imports most of its wheat gluten. Last year, for instance, the FDA reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China. Around the same time, Tyson Foods slaughtered and processed hogs that had eaten melamine-contaminated feed. The government decided not to recall the meat.

Only a week earlier, however, the FDA had announced that thousands of cats and dogs had died from melamine-laden pet food. This high-profile pet scandal did not prove to be a spur to reform so much as a red herring. Our attention was diverted to Fido and away from the animals we happen to kill and eat rather than spoil. ...

I do disagree that the pet food recalls of 2007 were a red herring. If the government of the US had paid attention, perhaps 2008
would never have occurred. Our furkids died to warn everyone, and all the pain they underwent and their owners underwent
was promptly ignored and chocked up to over the top nuts, like the global warmers.

Barcode my client uses:  087918 ******  American company based out of LI, NY. The last 6 numbers are from a block of numbers issued and they are assigned as product is developed. Looking at a cookbook I bought recently, the barcode starts with a 9 in front of the code, and then the 6 numbers are 780764 followed by another 6 numbers and it was run in Canada and the US at the same time. Company is based in NJ.

Up until now, I had never heard the first2 were country. I was always under the impression the first 6 just identified the company. I'll check with my client tomorrow to see what other info I can get. Usually if I'm banging out a bunch of product/packaging, I just change the last 2 or 3 numbers as I go. Doesn't matter what the product is. They don't have all the products produced in the same country. Some are here, some China etc. If we have to move something from one country to another, we change the "Made in" and that's it, iirc. My biggest worry is usually whether I need to include french translation, and do I have the right one! lol!~ 

ETA: more bar codes Kiss My Face lotion (NY) Made in USA 028367
Organic Beef Jerky 817820

rant away, shadowmice. All the pet owners of 2007 join in that rant on the government's failure
to assess the threat of melamine even close to the horrors it is capable of causing.

There is a bar code reading thread here on Itchmo. I saw the Phillippines article and flipped out, too,
about how nice it would be if the UPC identified country of origin. Going to look for it, as we all came
to the conclusion it does not do that...

Ok, this was a very recent thread before our 4 day outtage. Cato commented in it, JustMe about spices she
had in her kitchen cabinet , and was quoting same Phillippines article on bar codes and country of origin. According
to search tonight, the thread is gone. Searched for Phillippines, 480, bar code. So there is information lost off the site after
that outtage. Plus, if you search Phillippines, search results only include three entries. Phillippines comes
up lots of times in this thread alone. So there is maybe a lot of prior Itchmo information that has been affected
by the site's ups and downs and server problems unless someone has edited it. I know this thread existed because
I posted it originally.

rant on shadowmice!

I just typed my own rant---too long to really post and you all already know my rantings so I spared you all! 

Correct, at least for the home goods products I design. Say I design a Tinkerbell graphic for a 5x6 throw. There are 4 fabrications it could be made from. 2 would be manufactured in the US and 2 in China. The first 6 numbers of the barcode would be the same on all 4. Only the last couple of digits would change as each would need a unique number because the different fabrications are different product categories. I could have one of the US throws later manufactured in China without changing the barcode (as long as it was the exact same as the US made one). The barcode won't tell you which was manufactured where.