Instant Coffee, Tea From China Recalled for Melamine (in the USA)

[UpInArms]

Source: Bloomberg

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Seven instant coffee and milk tea products made in China are being recalled in the U.S. because of possible contamination with melamine, as health fears increased worldwide over the safety of Chinese dairy exports.

The Mr. Brown brand mixes are being recalled by King Car Food Industrial Co., based in Taiwan, and were made by China's Shandong Duqing Inc., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today in a statement. The agency said consumers shouldn't use the products.

The recall is the first announced by the FDA since milk tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical, was tied in China to the deaths of at least four babies and the illnesses of an estimated 53,000 children. The 27-nation European Union yesterday banned all imports of dairy-based Chinese food products for children and infants. India also has placed a three-month ban on diary products from China.

``The FDA is still in the process of determining how widespread the distribution is of Mr. Brown products in the United States,'' said Stephanie Kwisnek, an FDA spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

The FDA also warned consumers today not to eat White Rabbit Creamy Candy after New Zealand's food safety authority found the product had high levels of melamine. The agency said it was unaware of any illnesses in the U.S. connected to the candy or to Mr. Brown products.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aKWm.cUQGkOo&refer=home

[Betsy Ross]

1. Elitest message to follow:

Kosher
Local
Organic

All three help reduce the risks.

[Owl]

3. Right on. Those are the same rules we try to follow when at all possible.

[Betsy Ross]

9. Thanks. That usually gets me attacked.

It would be hard to give up organic if the budget gets tighter. I think we would just cut back on fancy foods like tomatoes and English cukes and eat more radishes and celery. We have chicken Friday night and may eat meat during the week once a month. Hey, after the mortgage, eating the highest quality food is at the top of my priority list. No movies, no new clothes, cheaper shampoo, no magazines, no dining out. I'll cut back on these before food.

[alfredo]

67. Cheap shampoo can double as liquid hand soap. Much cheaper too.

[amdezurik]

13. only because I have seen industrial grinders

I only eat kosher hot-dogs, on those rare occasions I do eat them at all. they take their food seriously.

[Critters2]

33. No they don't. The world's largest kosher slaughterhouse

is being investigated for child labor violations, underpaying of workers, and other OSHA violations. It was also the target of some pretty damning video of animal cruelty by PETA and HSUS, and one of the largest immigration raids in the nation, while in the midst of a company-sponsored campaign against union organizing.

They take profits seriously, but that's about all. As someone else said, google "Agriprocessors" if you want to see how your kosher hot dogs are produced.

[aquart]

51. Yep.

[Nikia]

76. Kosher takes the source of their ingredients seriously

I work for a Kosher certified food plant. The plant does not make or use animal products but our proudct and ingredients have to be certified Kosher. We have a rabbi that drops in completely unannounced several times per year. All of our ingredients are inspected and everything must be completely traceable. We have had to get new suppliers on short notice because some suppliers had their Kosher certification cancelled. The most recent one was a Chinese company.
While Kosher plants might not be any better than any other company as far as other business practices, they are good at tracing all their ingredients and being inspected more frequently by people with less compromising values (on this subject anyway).

[LeftyMom]

14. Kosher doesn't mean a thing. Google "agriprocessors"

[slampoet]

28. Kosher doesn't even mean made free of exploited labor.

[LeftyMom]

31. Or animal cruelty.

There's some nasty hidden camera footage on YouTube.

[FreakinDJ]

24. But they have been marketing this stuff @ "Health Fairs"

as Health food

[BadgerKid]

30. Is CRC-D kosher? Thx. n/t

[underpants]

77. The Melamine pet kill off was why we went organic

and that includes farmer's markets

[Owl]

2. This is ridiculous! If I know if it's from China, I ain't eating it!

[AwakeAtLast]

54. But you won't know if the ingredients used came from China.

That is the real problem, I'm afraid.

[AwakeAtLast]

55. DU bug

Sorry!

[Wizard777]

4. Is there anything China doesn't put melamine in?

What chinese gangster has the melamine production racket?

[dixiegrrrrl]

35. Lead.

[ronnie624]

57. Don't forget the American gangsters

like Wal-Mart, who will do anything they can to avoid labor, environmental and consumer regulations. They ply legislators with "campaign contributions" and "lobbying" money, regularly. They are the ones who sell the contaminated shit to American consumers.

[jbnow]

82. Good question. Why coffee? They were using it to raise

tested protein levels in foods but with coffee that doesn't make any sense.

Unless it's one of those flavored mixes that has powdered mils as part of it and that was contaminated. I should have checked that first.

When thew per food scare happened the contaminated product mixed into the pet food was actually FOOD GRADE labeled, not feed grade.
I always wondered if it got into our human foods as well...but since we are bigger and that food would not be our whole diet it didn't have the big effect on people. I do not trust our government to tell us when they don't have to.

And the baby formula there...after what they learned from pet food can you imagine someone using that just for profit when it is for babies?

[kestrel91316]

5. Do NOT eat ANYTHING from China. They don't give a damn how many

people or pets they poison.

[EFerrari]

7. So insane. I guess they have no real concern for repeat customers.

:crazy:

[kestrel91316]

20. They have over a billion people eager to produce more.

They don't NEED repeat customers.

[Ian David]

6. Oh, crap. I have something similar to that in my house. n/t

[texanshatingbush]

8. If Bushco wants to "let the market" work on this little issue......

.....then I say we need legislation to ensure that EVERY product in the US that we eat or put in our mouths or bodies should show the country-of-origin of all components of that product. That way, we consumers could "vote with our money" by letting the manufacturers know which imports were acceptable and not acceptable. Self-regulation is obviously not working very well.

The Chinese melamine is the current issue.

Before that, there was the Chinese toothpaste issue. I was concerned about that one, and wrote to Colgate-Palmolive, asking a no-wiggle-room question about the source of the components in their toothpaste. This is the somewhat wiggly answer I received:

"Colgate does not import toothpaste from China into the United States and Diethylene glycol is not now and has never been an ingredient in Colgate Toothpaste anywhere in the world.

"As a global company we get our ingredients from a variety of sources. As a result of availability and global needs, sources of ingredients may change. Rest assured no matter where we source our ingredients, we hold our suppliers to stringent standards for quality and effectiveness.

"Regardless of the country where we manufacture it, Colgate toothpaste is made in strict adherence to our global safety and quality standards. These standards include rigorous, worldwide quality checks on all incoming materials and finished goods as well as supplier verification procedures to ensure the safety and quality of all ingredients."


Then, as now, the Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste tube does NOT say anything about the origin of its ingredients. All it says is "Distributed by Colgate-Palmolive Company, New York, NY".

The objective of a business to to make the greatest profit at the lowest expense. Businesses in China and other countries without much of a history or interest in safety regulation, focus on the profit part without much interest in difficult-to-trace-back-to-them negative impact to the consumer.

If a global economy is going to continue, its practitioners MUST control product safety. Otherwise, the solution of the "thinking person" will be, as said above, buy local/kosher/organic.

[bean fidhleir]

10. During the horror scandal of the cat and dog deaths, I asked a local

maker of premium-priced cat food about where they source their ingredients. I, too, phrased it without wiggle room and got back the same class of written-by-a-lawyer-weasel response that you got.

I did not again buy food for my cat from them. Dirtbags.

[Bette Noir]

11. We have dairies in this country.

There is no reason for us to be importing Chinese milk products at all.

[CatholicEdHead]

12. Only Instant Tea I have had was in Lipton Brisk Iced Tea this summer

Instant Tea was listed as an ingredient.

[JoFerret]

15. All the tea in China?

Chuck it in the harbor.

On second thoughts ...Maybe not.

[Dover]

59. hehehe...

NOT FOR

[OakCliffDem]

16. I was not aware China exported coffee

I drink the cheap stuff from the Yellow Dollar General store by the quart.

Does anyone know if the Dollar General sells coffee made in China? The Jar says the coffee is from Mexico, but should I believe that?

[dgibby]

48. from Mexico--

the question is, was it imported from China to Mexico? Who the hell knows!:grr:

[kma3346]

17. It's really hard to avoid buying food made in China

This is an interesting article about a woman named Sara Bongiorni, who tried to go a year without buying anything from China--an extremely daunting and time-consuming task.

From cnn.com:

But the one area that posed an unexpected challenge was grocery shopping. She says it's almost impossible to tell which foods have ingredients from China.

"As much label reading as I did, there's no way I could know whether or not I was buying something with ingredients from China," says Bongiorni, who documented her experience in a book, "A Year Without 'Made in China.' "

Across the nation, Americans have begun taking a more critical look at where their food comes from, especially food from China. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found 46 percent of those polled are "very concerned" about the safety of food imported from China; another 28 percent said they were "somewhat concerned" about Chinese food products.

The amount of food imported from China has grown dramatically in the past decade. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the United States imported $4.1 billion worth of seafood and agricultural products from China in 2006. In 1995, it was $800 million.

So, can you avoid eating foods with products from China?

Experts say that is pretty much impossible. You can lower your chances of eating foods with Chinese products by staying away from all processed foods and eating fresh "whole foods," such as fruits and vegetables. Many grocery stores are beginning to label where their fruits and vegetables are grown.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/07/26/china.products/index.html

[tridim]

18. What is milk tea? Is Chinese green tea safe? I drink 3 cups a day.

And where the hell is all this melamine coming from? It's almost as if they're doing it on purpose.

[FreakinDJ]

22. You need to stop drinking that crap before your kidneys give out

[tridim]

29. The entire World drinks Chinese green tea.

Are you saying it's all poison?

[mile18blister]

25. Not almost. They are doing it on purpose.

Adding melamine makes milk (and other foods) appear to have a higher protein content. They get more money for selling poisoned crap.

[wickerwoman]

40. Milk tea is a kind of bottled iced tea with milk already added

and you would have to drink two gallons a day for it to have an effect and even then the worst you would get would be kidney stones. Green tea is perfectly safe since the melamine is in the milk powder mixed in to make milk tea.

But don't let that slow down the hysteria and rampant racism all over this thread.

On edit: it might be a problem if you're feeding raw instant cappucino mix to your six month old baby but then you would be an idiot anyway.

[amandabeech]

58. You think that wanting to avoid adulterated food is racist?

Do you have any idea how long folks here in the U.S. and elsewhere have fought to get adulterated food off the shelves?

Even if the stuff will not kill one immediately, why should one ignore it?

You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to play the race card on food safety. And I mean really ashamed, particularly if your efforts derive from self-interest.

[wickerwoman]

66. No, I think

"Don't eat anything from China" and "The Chinese don't care how many people they poison" are racist.

Full disclosure... I live in China and have lived in China for five years. I drink massive amounts of cheap milk tea... at least three bottles a day. I have never had any problems with my kidneys or with anything else. The kidneys are designed to deal with a reasonable amount of toxic shit every day. Yes, it's dangerous for babies and pets to ingest a lot of this stuff but it's a little hysterical for adults to translate that into I'm not going to drink bagged green tea (which couldn't possibly contain melamine contaminated milk powder because, hello, it doesn't have any milk in it) just because it comes from China where the subhuman mongoloid hordes don't care about their children because there's 1.3 billion of them already (that's an almost direct quote from another thread on this crisis). If you don't see the racism rampaging all over these threads then you need your eyes checked.

[amandabeech]

70. And you need your head examined.

You cheapen real racism with your own prejudices and insecurities.

I simply will not respond to any more of your posts. It is not worth it.

[MH1]

74. "never had any problems with my kidneys"

yeah, lots of smokers never have any problems with their lungs, until one day they find out they have cancer or emphysema.

While some statements on this thread are probably unnecessarily broad-brush, I don't think it's fair to call it racism. The comment "they don't care how many people they poison" has been applicable for a long time to an unacceptable percentage of corporate profit-mongers. Of course those profit-mongers exist in China, too, and any conscientious business owners are tainted by their actions. Based on many recent incidents that have occurred in China with food being tainted by toxins, it is probably fair to say that dangerous profit-mongering is more prevalent there than in many places, and due to the sheer volume of stuff that we import from China, far more likely to present a problem to Americans. Furthermore, our own government has failed to insure that consumers have the information they need to protect themselves (i.e. country of origin labeling). So it's no wonder that people are freaking out a little bit. How can I avoid buying food from China if I don't know where the ingredients of products are coming from?

And why shouldn't we avoid buying anything from China? Until they get a reasonably effective regulatory regime in place, products from China simply are not safe. I am sorry if that assertion bothers you, but it's supported by the facts.

[wickerwoman]

75. It doesn't bother me.

By all means, buy the most local organic food you can get your hands on. Label everything.

20-60 people die of e-coli poisoning every year in the US from tainted meat. I guess I won't be buying any food products from the US ever because y'all just don't value human life. And why would you? There's 300 million of you and you can make as many more babies as you want.

Oh, but but but that's not prejudiced... I'm just concerned about food safety.

[MH1]

79. I wouldn't buy meat from the US either, if I were you.

Rarely eat the stuff myself, and when I do, I know I'm taking a risk. I'd much prefer if the US had a decent regulatory regime in place concerning meat!

[marions ghost]

62. There's no level of melamine

that is acceptable. Period. :thumbsdown:

Americans should avoid all products containing milk powder.

You can call the manufacturers of whatever product you use and ask specifically if they use any dairy products from China in it. I have found that they will tell you (of course they may lie, but they do answer you).

[juno jones]

42. Should be OK

Just avoid any instant stuff with added dry milk.

Edit to add: Maybe you should switch to japanese green tea. I buy the whole leaf stuff with roasted brown rice- gemnaicha, and strain it meself. Yum.

[bluesmail]

19. Why do we IMPORT tea and coffee for crying out loud!

We've gone down the rabbit hole because we've lost our way. Head Hurts (Yeah, NAFTA or some other acronym for crying out loud)

[Critters2]

36. Do you know of domestically produced tea and/or coffee?

I think precious little of these are US products. Much as I might wish otherwise.

[bluesmail]

44. I stand corrected. I am upset and wasn't thinking

AND it was a rhetorical question. Thank You

[Maine-ah]

60. well, for me we have a local roaster

Rockcity Coffee Roaster

http://www.rockcitycoffee.com/


and then there is Green Mountain

http://www.greenmountaincoffee.com/

[jmowreader]

39. We almost have to import both

There's a tea plantation in South Carolina--Bigelow owns it--but tea is generally an imported product. As is coffee--the only place in the US where it's grown is Hawaii, and they don't grow much of it there.

The weather in this country is generally all wrong for growing that kind of tropical crop.

[bluesmail]

45. I've been upset. And myself screwing up intellectually

Thanks for correcting me before I made a Hugher Mistake.

[FreakinDJ]

21. Great - a friend of mine just got screwed for $5000

he bought into some sort of AmWay style marketing scheme to sell those little coffee packets from China. I phoned him to tell him to cancel the check, but he told me he did a bank wire transfer

[ladywnch]

23. what is it with all the melamine? is it some kind of cheap filler or something?

why/how is it in everything they produce?

[mile18blister]

26. Makes "food" appear to have a higher protein content. nt

[ladywnch]

34. so they're attempting to show that coffee and tea have a protein content?

I would think that would be the first red flag!

[mile18blister]

38. Don't know about the coffee

But "milk tea" sounds like tea with milk added (or vice versa). Many types of protein - dairy, gluten, etc. can have melamine added so they can sell the poisoned crap for a higher price.

[wickerwoman]

43. They're adding it to milk powder

which has to pass Chinese government regulations for minimal nutrition because it's used in baby formula. The companies water down the milk and then add melamine so it doesn't look watered down.

It's not all coffee and tea. It's instant mixes of milky drinks like lattes, cappucinos and milk teas. And an average adult would have to drink two gallons of it a day for months to damage their kidneys.

[ladywnch]

46. ah! that's an answer I was looking for. thank you.

[texanshatingbush]

47. bezdomny.......I note that you are from Shanghai China......

.....what is the view of the melamine issue over there? Is it a concern? Are there other concerns among the Chinese populace about unsafe additives to food components?

With regard to your statement voiced up-thread:

"But don't let that slow down the hysteria and rampant racism all over this thread"

I don't think racism and hysteria are the drivers of the concerns we have voiced on this thread. Food safety is the driving concern, and there have been documented instances of late about serious lapses in food safety. China has been one of the culprits, as has Mexico (tomatoes & jalapenos), and Chile (grapes), and California (spinach), among others.

[wickerwoman]

71. It's a massive concern.

50,000 babies are in the hospital and thousands will have irreparable kidney damage. These families are only allowed to have one child and many women are sterilized after their first kid and can't have another. That raises the stakes enormously and the government it shitting themselves and cracking down as hard as they can.

People in China know that the food they eat is covered in pesticides and god knows what other crap. There was a massive scandal with pig farmers feeding expired antibiotics (provided by the ding ding ding US pharmaceutical industry) to their pigs. But they eat what they can afford and don't ask questions.

What are they supposed to do about it? They can't write letters to the editor. They can't protest in the streets. They can go online now and post scathing blog entries which is what is happening around the country.

I read somewhere that more food and other goods are turned away at the US border from Portugal than are turned away from China. But when was the last time you saw big splashy headlines and threads on DU vowing to never buy any more Portuguese crap?

By all means, buy locally grown food from people you know. That's just smart. But to make a massive point of "I'm never buying anything from China because they just don't care about human life" *is* racist and hysterical.

[texanshatingbush]

72. Thanks for the info.....

....I wasn't sure how widespread the knowledge of the problem was there, because I don't know the degree to which the press or others (blogs) can cover the story.

[wickerwoman]

73. Here's a discussion on a state monitored English language BBS in China:

http://comment.chinadaily.com.cn/articlecmt.shtml?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chinadaily.com.cn%2Fchina%2F2008-09%2F27%2Fcontent_7064279.htm&title=Sanyuan+may+take+over+tainted+milk+brand+Sanlu

They've left some pretty critical stuff standing.

On edit (my favorite comment because he almost, almost gets it and then...)

" fundamental 2008-09-27 18:26
Its not a question of just Sanlu. Its that cheating culture that prevails among business people in this country. Lets admit it. Because if you hide something fundamental cause, the problem will appear again and again in one form or another. This time its milk from Sanlu, Yili, Mengniu etc. What about the fake medicine for which a Minister was given the death sentence.
The short term cure is a strengthening of supervision, but fundamentally its something wrong with the business culture that has got to be set right. I suggest that only two types of people should be allowed to engage in business: those that abide genuinely by the iron discipline of the CPC, or those who genuinely believe in the tenets of a religion. People in the latter category dare not entertain evil thoughts, much less be involved in evil deeds, since they know the good Lord is watching over them, even if they find themselves a loo to hide in with their evil thoughts. "

[texanshatingbush]

80. Fascinating....thanks for the link! n/t

[magellan]

61. Are you suggesting that melamine is safe in food/drink?

I don't think you'd convince the thousands of pet owners whose dogs and cats died last year due to the stuff.

Go peddle your "free market/disaster capitalism" philosophy somewhere else.

[wickerwoman]

69. No, I'm saying

don't rush to the doctor's office because you had an instant cappucino three months ago.

Of course it's not acceptable to have melamine in food. And the fuckwads who killed these babies to make a quick buck are going to be shot in the head for it. And even though I'm anti-death penalty, I'm not holding any frickin' vigils.

What I am saying, is that if you're an adult you would have to drink shit-loads of this stuff (and I have been drinking shit loads of this stuff for five years) to get, at most, kidney stones. Of course, it's more dangerous for babies and pets because of their smaller body weight and developing kidneys.

But to go from this to "I'm not eating anything from China ever" or "Is it safe to eat fortune cookies?" is ridiculous.

Again, this happened *because* the Chinese government is trying to regulate this shit and some greedy assholes tried to get around it and a lot of babies died. It's a massive tragedy. But to turn that it "this is China's revenge on America" or "they're trying to poison us" or "the Chinese don't care who they kill" is racist self-absorbed bullshit.

[magellan]

78. A couple of people overreacted, including you

"But don't let that slow down the hysteria and rampant racism on this thread..."

You wrote that to someone who was engaging in no such thing.

Regardless of what the Chinese government, or the FDA for that matter, may be trying to do in the form of regulation, it's a FACT that poisonous foodstuffs keep entering the US and other countries from China. And this is one more time. It's only natural that we'd be wary of all products coming from China as a result.

That's not hysteria or racism, it's common sense.

[wickerwoman]

81. Africanized killer bees...

swarming over the border. The Africanized bee is more aggressive than the gentle, pleasant European bee. There's no way to stop them and they're coming to eat your baby alive!

Chinese milk powder... swarming over the border. Chinese mela-milk is more poisonous that clean, nutritious American food. The only way to stop it is to only buy American food because your friendly local dairy conglomerate would never dream of poisoning your family to make a quick buck and the eagle-eyed inspectors from the Bush-era FDA would be all over them if they did. (This message brought to you by US network TV which has no vested interest in Americans buying American food. Now watch these commericals...)

Poisonous foodstuffs enter the US from a lot of countries. Poisonous foodstuff are made in the US. Just how thoroughly did they check your hamburger for mad cow disease (hint: not very thoroughly). By all means, be wary of non-local, non-organic food. This thread, to me, has gone far, far beyond reasonable concern for food safety. Four Chinese babies are dead. Fifty thousand Chinese babies were hospitalized. And all I see are a lot of over-priviliged people thousands of miles away saying "Gosh, don't *those people* even care about their own babies? I guess not... there's billions more where they came from" and "What will happen to ME!!!" and "I'm so glad our food industry is so well regulated... I'm only going to buy American."

I apologize if I find it a little absurd and that cynicism is showing through. I just watched Bowling for Columbine again and I have to say this non-stop exposure of specifically Chinese food scandals reeks of "stir them up and set them loose." Why focus on safety and regulation of the American food industry when we can point to China and say "see, see, they're trying to poison us... buy American!"

And I specifically did not accuse the poster I was responding to of "hysteria and racism"... that's why I said "on this thread" not "in your post".

[magellan]

83. You said "*rampant* hysteria and racism"

...which simply wasn't true. The willingness of some to give in to unfounded paranoia goes both ways.

[shanti]

32. yes, i'd like to know that too!

the only thing that comes to mind when i think of "melamine" is those cheap plastic dinnerware that everyone had in the 60's and 70's. are they putting PLASTIC in their food???

[dgibby]

50. same ingredient

[Frank Cannon]

64. China's discovered a great business model of taking their toxic waste...

and fashioning it into merchandise and food that they ship overseas.

It gets rid of their waste and makes them loads of cash at the same time.

Ingenious, really.

[slampoet]

27. No list of Products. WHY BOTHER REPORTING THIS???

Where the fuck is their responsibility to the public right to know?


Or are they just making sure to short their chinese food stocks before they announce the brands?

[SILVER__FOX52]

37. Is it just me.......

or isn't there a federal agency that is supposed to protect us from this crap. FDA or something like that? Oh, I forgot the Bush toades don't actually do anything. This nightmare is almost over, I hope.

[anitar1]

56. Silver Fox, I am very surprised that peple do not realize

that the Pugs and probably some of the Dems voted to allow the country of origin NOT be required on foods. Part of the wonderful "free Trade" market. this happened a few years back. Not really that long ago, either. Bush Co. pushed a lot of things through to give their buddies a break--read $$$$. We need all of those laws vetoed and it will take years to get to all of them.I would imagine thousands were passed by our sterling congress.

[Bluebear]

41. Coffee, Tea, or Melamine??

[Poll_Blind]

49. NOOOOOOOOO! I love Mr. Brown!

Greatest canned coffee I've ever had. Oh well, not worth dying for.

PB

[Shallah Kali]

52. If you want Country of Origin Labeling on all food click on this link here

to email congress about it:
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/fwwatch/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6119

Please also check at the state level for any work to promote your state's food products. Make a point of thanking your local stores that label local produce as well. As well as cutting down on your risk of you and your family being poisoned by melamine, lead, or whatever fresh hell China or another country unleashs it supports your local economy instead of China with all it's human rights abuses.

[rayofreason]

53. Drink only fair trade coffee n/t

[KewlKat]

63. When it comes to food stuff made in China

we should all say thanks, but no thanks.

[earth mom]

65. Okay, anyone know WHY there is melamine in just about every damn factory in China?!

:wtf:

What am I missing here?!!!

[fascisthunter]

68. Wow... Melamine In Everything.... talk about not caring about humans

fuck that...