Tag Archives: China

C is for Chinese; food takes out tennis players

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David Ferrer of Spain, ranked fifth in the world, retired from his first-round match Tuesday in Beijing at the China Open, stopping his match against Lu Yen-Hsun of Taiwan at 5-4 in the first set. The reason for Ferrer’s midmatch retirement, his first such forfeit since 2009, was listed as a stomach virus.

The New York Times reports Ferrer’s retirement came one day after 24th-ranked Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia retired in the third set of her first-round match against Polona Hercog of Slovenia, a qualifier, citing a G.I. illness.

Though only the second Chinese tournament of the year, the China Open is not the first to be troubled by such problems, perhaps not surprising given China’s heavily scrutinized record on food safety.

Two weeks earlier at a W.T.A. tournament in Guangzhou, there were three exits attributed to gastrointestinal illness. Top-seeded Marion Bartoli of France retired in the first set of her first-round match, then Olga Govortsova of Belarus retired after losing the first set of her second-round match against Alize Cornet of France. Later that day, it was Cornet who withdrew from her doubles match because of gastrointestinal issues. Alexandra Panova of Russia and Yung-Jan Chan of Taiwan also withdrew midway through matches in Guangzhou, citing the possibly stomach-exacerbated issues of “heat illness” and “dizziness.”

Though the aforementioned are confirmed examples of stomach issues forcing players out of competition, it is difficult to determine. Since there is little risk of long-term damage from playing through digestive discomfort compared to a joint or muscle injury, the incidence of players who decide to soldier on is likely a much higher percentage than for other afflictions.

Consumers as CCPs; Beijing food poisoning victims urged to save vomit, feces for tests

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Poop samples are not easy to collect for testing, especially if you’ve got some foodborne-inspired runs.

Collecting vomit samples could be viewed by many as just gross.

Beijing health authorities now say that customers who are involved in suspected food poisoning incidents in a restaurant should keep any leftover food, and their vomit and feces as evidence.

??The capital has a high incidence of microbial and mass food poisoning in summer and fall, said Cai Changjing, media officer of Beijing Health Inspection Institute on Monday. ??The institute has published a set of guidelines on its website, giving suggestions on how to deal with a food poisoning incident, he told the Global Times.??"Customers should keep the restaurant receipt, and then we’ll know which dishes in which restaurants have problems," Cai said.??"We also suggest people keep any leftovers, or vomit and feces as evidence," he noted. ??

Since the end of July, more than 2,000 cases of infectious diarrhea have been reported in the city, according to the Beijing News.??Li Na, 29, a resident in Beijing, said the institute’s suggestion is useful but she feels it will be hard to implement.??"It’s disgusting. I’d rather take some pills at home than collect the vomit as proof.

“If the poisoning is serious, I’ll just go to the hospital and let the doctor decide whether to keep these things," said Li.??Cai.

Do companies really need babysitters? China stiff-arms FDA on jerky pet treat testing, reports show

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It’s sometimes fun to jibe at health types – local, state, federal – but they have a tough job and I’d be lousy at it.

JoNel Aleccia of NBC News reports Chinese government officials overseeing plants that make chicken jerky pet treats blamed for thousands of illnesses and deaths among American dogs have refused to allow U.S. inspectors to collect samples for independent analysis, newly released records show.

Investigators with the federal Food and Drug Administration came away empty-handed after conducting April inspections at four jerky treat manufacturing sites in Liaocheng and Jinan, China, according to the records.

The plants make pet treats sold by the St. Louis-based Nestle Purina PetCare Co., including the popular Waggin’ Train jerky brands.

Chinese officials stipulated that FDA officials could collect samples only if they agreed to specific conditions, including a requirement that the samples be tested in Chinese-run laboratories.

As a result, “no samples were collected during this inspection,” wrote Dennis L. Doupnik, an FDA investigator who visited the sites.

In addition, the reports showed that the Chinese plants conducted either no laboratory tests or only sporadic tests of the raw materials, including meat used in treats fed to many of the 78.2 million pet dogs in the U.S.

But where’s the company at the center of some 2,000 pet illnesses, Nestle Purina? Hiding behind government, although the company makes the profit.

Elizabeth Mawaka, 57, a Hartford, Conn., woman who says her two Boston terriers, Max and Toby, died after eating tainted treats, got it right when she called on Nestle Purina to demand that samples be released to the FDA.

“It really comes down to the company,” said Mawaka, who is suing jerky treat makers and retailers. “We can talk all we want about China, but it’s really the company.”

However, a Nestle Purina spokesthingy said the inspections demonstrated no problems with the firm’s products, no evidence that they’ve led to illnesses in animals in the U.S., and that the terms of the inspection were set by the U.S. and Chinese governments, not by Nestle Purina or the manufacturing site officials.

Delicious: China bans mud snails after barfing

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China’s health ministry Friday banned the sale of Nassariidae, a small mud snail species, that have reportedly caused people to faint and vomit after eating them.

The ministry said that after eating them, people could feel the snails’ poisonous effects within five minutes to four hours.

The poison, which comes from tetrodotoxin, a toxin usually found in pufferfish, has no known antidote, Xinhua reported.

The snail mostly inhabits the southeastern coastal areas including those in Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

Doyle writes: China can learn from US food safety net

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Mike Doyle, Regents Professor and director of the Center for Food Safety, University of Georgia, writes in China Daily today:

“The food-borne disease surveillance system in the United States has become so robust that it has detected hundreds of outbreaks in the past six years that previously would likely have gone unrecognized.

“This has resulted in many foods being newly identified as vehicles of illnesses. This increased awareness of weaknesses in the U.S. food safety net has by and large led to the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will raise the level of attention that food producers, processors, distributors and importers must give to ensuring their products are safe for human and animal consumption.

These new regulations will have direct relevance to the Chinese food industry, especially if foods or ingredients from China are exported to the U.S.. Also, many of the new rules, if applied in China, could enhance the overall safety of its food supply. …

“Although federal oversight of food processors is important, there is a fundamental principle that must be adopted by the entire food industry for a food safety net to be robust and effective. Everyone involved in the food continuum must be focused foremost on providing consumers with safe foods. Producers who are more motivated by economics and consider food safety to be secondary can undermine public confidence and the integrity of a country’s entire food system.

The approaches to enhancing the safety of the U.S. food supply are largely the result of decades of experience by food safety regulatory agencies and the food industry in mitigating the risk of food contamination.

With a national food safety program under development in China, the Chinese food industry and regulatory agencies could readily benefit from the U.S. experience in improving the safety of their foods by adopting and implementing similar practices and policies.

Throw It Out the Window: China’s endless food safety scares

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Calum MacLeod of USA Today reports China’s authoritarian government struggles to reassure citizens than it can deliver the safe food they rank as a top priority.

In the city of Guangzhou, whose Cantonese cuisine is celebrated worldwide, more than 46% of residents are dissatisfied with food safety, and over 37% said they had suffered recent food safety problems, according to a survey released this month by the Guangzhou Public Opinion Research Center.

"There are two Chinas on the tip of the tongue," says Shanghai student Wu Heng, a fan of the series. "There’s the China shown on TV, with its traditional food culture and long history. Then there’s another China shown on my website, the current environment in which black-hearted enterprises make black-hearted foodstuffs and have a large market."

Wu, 26, became active in the food safety cause because of his favorite dish of braised beef and rice. Startled by a news report on fake beef, he was inspired to create an online food safety database that allows visitors to add the latest problems nationwide, often involving the illegal use of additives.

With his website, "Throw It Out the Window," Wu hopes more public awareness and pressure will produce bold steps to tackle China’s food safety crisis. His site’s popularity is soaring at a million-plus views a day, Wu says.

Food safety has already taken a turn for the better, says Wu Yongning, chief food safety scientist at the Ministry of Health in Beijing, who insists there are less serious incidents today than four or five years ago.

"There is greater media supervision now which exposes problems and makes the government play the role it should," he says.

Beijing sets ‘two-fly’ rule for public restrooms

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Fox News reports that public restrooms in Beijing must contain no more than two flies per stall, according to a bizarre new directive issued to washroom attendants.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment issued the rule Monday as a "new standard for public toilet management," the Beijing News reported.

Xie Guomin, the official in charge of the initiative, told the newspaper that the two-fly rule was not compulsory, but was a new benchmark to improve the Chinese capital’s notoriously unpleasant public restrooms.

"We will not actually count fly numbers. The regulation is specific and quantified, but the inspection methodology will be flexible."

Shmenge revolt: formaldehyde-tainted cabbages in China

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Never been a fan of the cabbage, but did tell Amy yesterday on the way back from the shops, where cabbage was abundant and cheap, that Mrs. Smolarz, mother to a hockey-playing friend and university roommate for years 1 and 2, made authentically yummy cabbage rolls.

Mrs. Smolarz would be shocked to learn vegetable sellers in China have been caught spraying cabbages with a formaldehyde solution to keep them fresh in transit, the state news agency Xinhua has reported.

Xinhua said the practice had been common in eastern China for years.

The agency said it was being done because most farmers cannot afford refrigerated trucks for cabbages.

Formaldehyde is a toxic cancer-causing compound often used as a disinfectant and for embalming.

Yosh and Stan Shmenge – The Shmenge Brothers – would also be shocked. Here they are from the 1980s on Letterman, promoting their farewell concert, The Band-inspired Last Polka, with their smash hit, the Cabbage Rolls and Coffee Polka.

177 died from E. coli O157:H7 in a 1999 outbreak in China

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 Who knew?

The largest, most-fatal outbreak of E. coli O157 or other shiga-toxin producing E. coli wasn’t sprouts in Germany in 2011, wasn’t roast beef in Scotland in 1996 or Ontario in 1985, wasn’t Japan in 1996 in radish sprouts.

It was in Xuzhou, China, in 1999: 177 dead, 195 hospitalized with hemolytic uremic syndrome. An estimate of the number sickened was not available.

A new paper by Chinese researchers examining the E. coli O157:H7 virulence factors involved in the outbreak strain dryly notes, “A less well known massive outbreak of O157:H7 occurred in, China, in 1999 … which has only been reported in Chinese journals.”

Those extra languages could really come in handy.

The authors write in PLoS ONE today that,

“The O157:H7 outbreak occurred between April and September and peaked in June, 1999 with 195 HUS cases and 177 deaths from 52 villages of seven counties in Jiangsu and neighboring Anhui province. Of the 195 cases, 167 (85.6%) were over 50 years old with only two less than 20 years old and 121 (62.1%) were female. The National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, China CDC, commenced the outbreak investigation on June 28, 1999.

“Three and two strains of O157:H7 were isolated in Xuzhou city from fecal screening of 30 HUS and 25 diarrhea patients respectively. Thirty six sera collected from 42 HUS patients (85.7%) tested positive for IgG against EHEC-hemolysin or O157 lipopolysaccharide. Thus both bacterial and serological data confirmed that the outbreak was caused by O157:H7. The source of the infection was investigated using a case-control sample of 146 HUS patients and 840 healthy individuals, matched in age, sex and residence. No hand-washing before eating, consumption of fruits or vegetables without washing, consumption of leftover foods without heating, no fly-net cover for foods and high density of flies in kitchen were found to be statistically associated with infected patients. Using magnetic beads coated with antibodies against the O antigen, O157:H7 was isolated from six of 67 (9.0%) fly specimens, four of 74 (5.4%) raw meats and three of 83 (3.6%) cooked meats. O157:H7 was also isolated from live animals including 32 of 189 (16.9%) cattle, 50 of 605 (8.3%) pigs, 91 of 590 (15.4%) goats and 52 of 604 (8.6%) chickens raised in courtyards of families with and without HUS patients in the same villages.

“From the epidemiological investigations, the outbreak was mainly associated with peasants living with animals carrying O157:H7 in the household, including goats, pigs, chickens and cattle. Courtyard animals carrying O157:H7 contaminated the surrounding environment through fecal shedding and persons who had poor personal and kitchen hygiene practice were more likely to be infected. It is well established that farm animals are carriers of O157:H7. Additionally we found that 9% of the flies tested were positive for O157:H7 and thus they are important carriers in this outbreak. Flies may not just be mechanical vectors as O157:H7 can multiply inside the fly’s mouth and be excreted through fly fecal matter. Therefore poor hygiene and multiple routes of transmission may be the major contributing factors to the massive outbreak. However, increased transmission would have expected to increase number of infections but not higher number of HUS rate and high mortality rate. Host factors may contribute to higher mortality with a disproportional number of HUS cases and deaths in the older age groups. We showed that the outbreak was caused by a new sequence type, ST96.”

Abstract below:

A novel Escherichia coli O157:H7 clone causing a major hemolytic uremic syndrome outbreak in China***
30.apr.12
PLoS ONE 7(4): e36144.
Yanwen Xiong, Ping Wang, Ruiting Lan, Changyun Ye, Hua Wang, Jun Ren, Huaiqi Jing, Yiting Wang, Zhemin Zhou, Xuemei Bai, Zhigang Cui, Xia Luo, Ailan Zhao, Yan Wang, Shaomin Zhang, Hui Sun,Lei Wang, Jianguo Xu
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0036144
An Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak in China in 1999 caused 177 deaths due to hemolytic uremic syndrome. Sixteen outbreak associated isolates were found to belong to a new clone, sequence type 96 (ST96), based on multilocus sequence typing of 15 housekeeping genes. Whole genome sequencing of an outbreak isolate, Xuzhou21, showed that the isolate is phylogenetically closely related to the Japan 1996 outbreak isolate Sakai, both of which share the most recent common ancestor with the US outbreak isolate EDL933. The levels of IL-6 and IL-8 of peripheral blood mononuclear cells induced by Xuzhou21 and Sakai were significantly higher than that induced by EDL933. Xuzhou21 also induced a significantly higher level of IL-8 than Sakai while both induced similar levels of IL-6. The expression level of Shiga toxin 2 in Xuzhou21 induced by mitomycin C was 68.6 times of that under non-inducing conditions, twice of that induced in Sakai (32.7 times) and 15 times higher than that induced in EDL933 (4.5 times). Our study shows that ST96 is a novel clone and provided significant new insights into the evolution of virulence of E. coli O157:H7.

100 arrested in Chinese gutter oil food scandal

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Chinese officials say they have arrested more than 100 people suspected of making "gutter oil," illegal cooking oil made from waste and sold to restaurants.

In a food safety crackdown, 13 underground workshops were shut down and more than 3,584 tons of "gutter oil" were seized, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

"Gutter oil" is made by taking used up cooking oil, often left over from restaurants, along with spent animal fat, and reprocessing it into edible oil to be sold to restaurants.

Investigators found suspects used not only waste fat and oil, but also fat from rotten meat and slaughterhouse waste.