Food horror stories rock China
BEIJING | To eat, drink and be merry in China is done at your own risk: Weddings increasingly end with trips to the emergency room.</p><p> At an April wedding banquet in Wufeng, more than half of the 500 people in attendance went to the hospital; doctors blamed pork contaminated with a steroid that makes pigs grow faster and leaner. </p><p>During the May Day holiday weekend, 192 people from two weddings elsewhere in Hunan fell so ill they had to be hospitalized. </p><p> Since 2008, when six children died and 300,000 were sickened by melamine-tainted baby formula, the Chinese government has enacted ever-more-strict policies to ensure food safety. </p><p> It hasn’t helped. If anything, China’s food scandals are becoming increasingly frequent and bizarre. </p><p> In May, a Shanghai woman who had left uncooked pork on her kitchen table woke up in the middle of the night and noticed that the meat was emitting a blue light, like something out of a science fiction movie. Experts pointed to phosphorescent bacteria, blamed for another case of glow-in-the-dark pork last year. </p><p> Farmers in eastern Jiangsu province complained to state media last month that their watermelons had exploded “like landmines” after they mistakenly applied too much growth hormone in hopes of increasing their size. </p><p> The mass poisoning at the April 23 wedding in Wufeng village prompted provincial authorities to decree that samples of ingredients must be inspected in advance for banquets with more than 100 people. </p><p> It’s doubtful, however, that anybody will heed the regulation — China is famous for promulgating laws that are never enforced. There is no equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; myriad agencies reporting to various ministries. </p><p> “We have a saying in China that ‘food is the people’s god,’ so obviously it is very scary for ordinary people when things like this happen,” said Xiao Andong, a veterinary feed expert with the Hunan Institute of Veterinary Feed Control. Xiao was one of the investigators in the wedding poisoning case. </p><p> Clenbuterol, the suspect in the wedding poisoning, was banned in pig feed in the 1990s, but it is still used under the name “lean pork powder.”</p><p> “The profit margin is bigger than drug trafficking if you add the lean pork powder to the pig food,” said Zhou Qing, an author and dissident, who has styled himself as China’s equivalent of Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 novel “The Jungle” exposed the horrors of the U.S. meatpacking industry. </p><p> In 2006, Zhou published a book about the Chinese food industry that would extinguish the heartiest appetite. He wrote about foods tainted with pesticides, industrial salts, bleaches, paints and, especially nauseating, imitation soy sauce made from clippings swept up from hairdressers’ floors.</p><p> Although Zhou’s book has been published in 10 countries, it is not available in China. </p><p> Even victims are punished if they complain too loudly. Zhao Lianhai, who led a campaign for safer baby formula after his son developed kidney stones as a result of the melamine-tainted baby formula, was sentenced in November to prison for “inciting social disorder.
Book The Jungle By Upton Sinclair - News
At least Upton Sinclair's stomach-churning novel “The Jungle'' eventually led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, a regulatory response that many conservatives would complain has been bred into the American character.
“The profit margin is bigger than drug trafficking if you add the lean pork powder to the pig food,” said Zhou Qing, an author and dissident, who has styled himself as China's equivalent of Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 novel “The Jungle” exposed the
a matter of three weeks, and the country wakes up to the idea that a hamburger can be lethal if it's not properly cooked, and that's what really changed the debate in a way that hadn't happened since "The Jungle" was written by Upton Sinclair.
Strange to see someone reading outside the ballpark before a game — reading a book! Yet here she is, before the opening game of the Reds' series, on the banks of Mission Creek, reading Upton's Sinclair's “The Jungle,” a muckraking novel of immigrant
9: Which fast-food chain's interior design was a reaction to Upton Sinclair's “The Jungle”? 10: Which African nation's borders are often erroneously said to have been determined by cannonball? 1: Which PBS series that aired over 12 episodes in 1973 is
Book Review: "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair
It’s not often that I get to read a book that is as big an eye opener as “ The Jungle “. It’s on the same plane as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and from what I read afterwards, was far more instrumental in bringing direct change to one of the largest industries in America based in Chicago – the stockyards where the packing of meat took place.
The book highlights in heartbreaking detail the difficulties faced by the working class at a time of unbridled capitalism with no checks and balances such as minimum wages, workplace safety, and disability. It shows the underbelly of a society that is dog eat dog with no mercy and no quarter. To think that such an abomination actually existed and survived for over a hundred years is startling.
Upton Sinclair’s research was very thorough in this book and there is very little exaggeration which makes it even more horrifying. The story is full of pathos as we see an
uneducated and illiterate immigrant come to America wanting to live the American dream. Completely naive and innocent about the ways of this corrupt society, we see his spirit being systematically crushed until there is nothing left of the strong, confident and well meaning man who first arrived.
This book demonstrates all the actors in the system who perpetuate this monstrous society – the meat packers and owners of the business, the police, the politicians, and criminals of every kind. Read it and be stunned.
If I have a complaint against the book, it is that the ending is weak. It ends with a treatise on Socialism and in this, the author proves to be as naive as his hero. Of course we can’t blame him in the least since it was set in 1905 or so and the whole idea of Socialism was completely untested and no one could have foreseen its end. But leaving the last two chapters aside, the books is a triumph in making people aware of the circumstances by which their food was brought to the table on the backs of millions of uneducated, defenseless and hapless humans at the mercy of the big corporations.
Book The Jungle By Upton Sinclair - Bookshelf
The Jungle
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Upton Sinclair's The jungle
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The Jungle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair.[1] Sinclair ... This was not Sinclair's intention for the book though and not what he ...
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - Project Gutenberg
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Upton Sinclair - Wikipedia
With the income from The Jungle, Sinclair founded the utopian Helicon ... Sinclair said she had written the book based on her own experiences as a girl, and Upton ...
Book Review: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Jungle is a famous novel by Upton Sinclair which sent shockwaves through the meat packing industry in the early 20th century.
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Amazon.com: The Jungle (9781587260896): Upton Sinclair: Books ... In respect to the vulgarity discussed by Sinclair regarding the food industry of this era it should be noted ...