Product of Canada not so Canadian

Harry Burton from Apple Luscious Organic Orchard on Saltspring Island sent me a link to this news story from CBC Marketplace about how goods labeled "Product of Canada" are often filled with ingredients from China, or New Zealand or Mexico.
This is upsetting for those wanting to buy Canadian in an effort to support the domestic economy, limit the carbon footprint of our consumer habits and/or because they are wary of the quality of goods from places like China. In case, you've been living under a rock, China has skyrocketed to the top of the recall heap for health hazards concerning food and toy products.
The "Product of Canada" label legally means that 51% of the production costs were spent in Canada. Production of what it doesn't specify. In fact, if the 51% of the production costs were spent on the packaging, running the factory, wages, transportation, 100% of the contents could still legally come from imported foods from who knows where and they can still label it as "Product of Canada".
BTW, what the heck is butteroil-sugar blend??? Whatever it is, it's probably in your 'Product of Canada' corporate ice cream. And yeah, it's not actually made in Canada. Neither is most of the rest of the ingredients of your 'Product of Canada' ice cream. Nor is that "Wild Pacific Salmon" in your frozen fish dinner. In fact, as long as the final step of processing is done on Canadian soil, fish products can be labeled as "Product of Canada". Which means they can simply throw on a sauce onto your frozen fish in a Canadian factory and call it a "Product of Canada"A scary situation considering that many fish in Asia (the main fish source) are on high alert for diseases, contamination and other health concerns.
Just another indication that Canadian Food Inspection Agency isn't making health, food security and the public good a priority. It is the CFIA who designates these labels and decides the regulations behind them. Maybe instead of bending over and taking it from corporations, they ought to actually try protecting the Canadian public, health and enviroment.

Check out the video of this episode of CBC Marketplace. Definite food for thought.
The article also provides some tips of what to look for in labels that will trigger red flags that the the actual food contents are from abroad.

Buy real food from local farmers. Chances are that's the only way nowadays you can actually get Canadian food.

Happy Waste A Pumpkin Day!

I love the Halloween for the dressing up and make believe and the all around ghoulishness of it all. However, I hate the fact that folks are buying food for decoration and are only going to add to the landfill tomorrow. The cool pumpkin carving exhibit that came to town last week aside, most jack o' lanterns are a waste of a perfectly good vegetable. So at least, compost your decapitated pumpkin head when you're done.

Call me a Hallowe'em Scrooge but I'd rather that those pumpkins be grown and bought as pie pumpkins or stew pumpkins or casserole pumpkins or ice cream pumpkins (yes, there is such a thing.)
I'm not the only one. Iowa believes that pumpkins that are going to be used as decoration and not as food ought to taxed as such.

Am I the only noticing that Halloween has gotten bit huge with the affluenza bug?
I mean, it's one thing to string up some fake cobweb, paper skeletons and hang a few ghostly bedsheets from the tree. They're now selling robotic zombies, inflatable pumpkins the size of a Goodyear blimp and full-on coffins for the front yard. If you want to go all out, there are ways to green up your Halloween.

You wanna hear something really scary? There's a recall for fake teeth.
Of course, they wait until Hallowe'en to put out the recall for these lead laced teeth that have been sold all year long. Three guesses where these fake Hallowe'en teeth were made.

You wanna see something cool and scary, check out the Meatrix.
It's an awesome bit of animation about corporate factory meat farms.

Happy Hallow's Eve Everyone.

Jen

Cracking China (updated)

In an effort to spit shine her tarnished reputation, China has announced plans to introduce a safety recall system in an attempt to weed out unsafe products being manufactured within the country.

You'd think being one of the largest manufacturers of useless crap, they would have already have a recall system in place ;P

In the continuing saga of the pet food recall, a Diamond Pet Foods has recalled their products in BC for fear of melamime contamination.

This is after Canadian Food Inspection Agency found melamime contamined corn gluten from China last week. Of course, they've only started testing for these contaminants since the recall so who really knows what else is lurking behind the Made in China label.


Oh yeah, and all that cheapo farmed fish you've been eating, it could have been gobbling up melamine-contaminated fishmeal it's whole life. No wonder it has the same bland cardboard aftertaste as factory farmed poultry and pork. They've all be eating out of the same contaminated trough.

Agriculture Minister Pat Bell has confirmed that BC fish farms have beeing using the melamine contaminated feed and that consumers have already been eating the fish but , heck, it's no big deal. They're just going to wait until folks show up with unexplainable kidney failure before they consider putting forth a committee to outline the mandate for a study to consider the possibility that these health problems had any link to eating factory farmed chicken, pigs and fish. Until then, it's all fair game.

Gee, thanks Minister Bell, I feel so comforted. Way to look out for the citizens, Pat. Good job! You deserve a big ole corporate slap on the back!

Um...maybe it's time to reconsider this whole factory farm monstrosity and maybe feed animals real animal food instead of pellets of industrial poo. How's that for an idea?

Update: China isn't the only one falsely spike protein content of their animal feed with melamine. A U.S. manufacturer has admitted to intentionally adding melamine to its fish feed. Its fish feed and livestock feed have been recalled. The products also were shown to contain urea formaldehyde resin. This company is a branch of Canadian company, Tremblec, Inc. and its products were used in Uniscope feed.

And how is Canada responding to all these threats to our food security? It has sent off a team to China to boost trade in agricultural products, amongst other areas. China is already Canada's second largest trading partner. Do we really need any more contaminated food?

Not only is China's pet killing kibbles being recall but their toothpaste too. China's been having a rough couple of months. In an effort to prove that they're sincere in their crackdown, China's former chief food and drug regulator was sentenced to death for accepting bribes and approving drugs that we're safe for human use. Wow, they sure do things differently in China. In North America. government officials that tango with pharmecutical companies and get dangerous products approved by federal agencies through the back door end up Secretary of Defense.

It's all the more reason to do what we can to protect our food sovereignty and local food security. Eat local & real food. Support your local farmers who are working hard to provide safe, healthy and yummy food for this community. For a list of farms and farmer's markets, check out the Nanaimo 100 Mile Diet website. For more information about protecting our local meat supply, check out this article.

ETA: After all that soapboxing, I had to have some wild local salmon. With little time to spare of lunch preparations, I found a lone can of local wild salmon in the cupboards.
I'm not the biggest fan of canned salmon after a childhood of eating fishy pink sawdust but I hadn't tried this local brand before. This is an Vancouver Island cannery's smoked sockeye salmon. The salmon was rich and meaty and wasn't waterlogged like many other brands. It had a smoky, deep flavour and it held up well in the salad.


(salad undressed)
Within a few minutes, I whipped up a quick smoked salmon & asian slaw salad with greens from the garden and other veggies from the farmer's market. I made a parsley pesto vinagrette with the pesto from the other night and a splash of locally grown apple cider vinegar. The dressing was just the right amount of tang and green.

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Fox is guarding the henhouse

So the US has finally released an announcement stating that millions of chicken have been fed tainted pet food.

Of course, they'll also saying that there's 'minimal risk' to humans who have consumed these chickens. One of the contaminants, melamine, causes irritation of eyes, skin and throat. It has been linked to cancer and kidney failure in lab rats.

The other known contaminant that melamine is reacting with, cyanruic acid, is used for swimming pools and hot tub. Yes, an obvious ingredient for making pet food.

A spokesmans from the National Chicken Council is quoted comparing feeding chickens contaminated pet food with baking cupcakes. Obviously, he is taking this very seriously.

Funny, most Americans I know don't look anything like a guinea pig...

Buy local and remember, it's a kidney-shaped pool, not treat your kidneys like a pool. (I know that was kinda lame...)

Would you like some poison with your pork chops?

Dear Corporate Bigwigs,

When the latest pet food recall was making the airwaves, your so-called experts and corporate mouthpieces went out of their way to assure the public that it toxic chemicals that were killing our pets was not in any danger of getting into the human food supply.

Right. Sure. Whatever you say, Bucko.

Then how come 6,000 hogs in the US are being quarantined after eating the contaminated pet food. How come pigs are being fed cat food to begin with?

More importantly, according to Associated Press, "U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said that meat from 345 hogs that ate tainted feed has already entered the U.S. food supply".

Now they're saying that the same contaminated pet food has been fed to factory farmed poultry. Yep, they feed dog food to chickens and chickens to humans. That means you're basically eating dog food in the form of factory farmed chicken meat. If you're lucky...

So, Dear Corporate Bigwibs, any more BS you want to feed the public???? What sort of faux food nightmare did you want to serve us for dessert?

Like we need another reason to support local meat producers instead of the corporate factory farms.

BTW, China is still denying that their products had anything to do with all these dead pets even though it just banned melamine, one of the contaminants, from it's food products. Kinda makes you wonder what else is lurking behind that 'Made in China' label.

To all pet owners, there is an expanding list of pet foods that have been recalled that now include dry foods, which up until recently has been deemed free of this contamination. Here's the cat food list and the dog food list.

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Blame it on the greens!

Remember the food ole days of E. coli outbreaks where the culprit was poorly cooked hamburger meat? Nowadays, it's factory farmed vegetables that are blamed for the fast food E.coli epidemics. The latest in a growing list of factory vegetable recalls is green onions. Taco Bell in the US has pulled all green onions from their mise en place after initial test showed that they may have been the carrier of the E. coli that made dozens of people sick last week. They not completely sure it's the green onions. It could be the lettuce or the grey-brown factory pablum they're passing off as ground beef in those tacos.

I say fast food needs to be recalled. All of it.

(Update: The green onions were linked to a farm in California and a distribution facility where the tainted spinach in September also went through. Is anyone surprised?)
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Onto a more festive topic, Nanaimo has launched a Holiday Zero Waste campaign through it's website. There are tips for greener alternatives for gift giving and decorating. I

I am part of that growing population that is disgusted and concerned about the growing consumer orgy that Christmas has become. For kids, there's a really cool website to teach you how to be a Consumer Hero and resist the ongoing trend of BUY, BUY, BUY. It was started by a group of elementary school kids in Ottawa. Very cool.

Adbusters is running a Buy Nothing Christmas campaign. We are getting pretty close to that. We're doing more of a Buy Less, Buy Local Christmas. DH and I have made a pact to not buy any Christmas decorations. Not a hard sell in this house since we plan to be scaling up a mountain or frozen waterfall over the X'mas holidays. We're probably only buying gifts for our niece and nephews and those may end up being gifts that we make for them. Everyone else gets a small little gift of homemade goodies made from locally grown foods. Some of that canning and preserving in the end of summer is going towards gifts.

For my holiday baking, I'm going as 100 mile diet as possible. Right now I'm dehydrating a bunch of locally grown fruit for Christmas cake. I also have local hazelnuts from Chemainus. Most of my baking is using organic spelt flour from Armstrong, BC. I know, it's not quite within the 100 miles radius but it was milled down in Cowichan Bay. I'm also reveling in the local veggies, especially carrots and parsnips that are going into spiced cakes. Local honey, eggs and dairy will also be used. Quite franky, since I've been buying and cooking with mostly locally grown foods, it's only natural to do it this way.

Happy Eating!

Jen

Crappy candy may give you the runs

Well, in the ongoing caravan of corporate food recalls, Hershey's has jumped onto the bandwagon with one of their own. Hershey's Canada has recalled it's chocolate and candy bars because they might be contaminated with salmonella.

The products included in the recall have date codes ranging from 6417 to 6455 and were manufactured between Oct. 15 and Nov. 10.

Salmonella can cause symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea. Which means that Oh Henry! bar will look just the same going into you the same as it does coming out.

Just stop eating crappy corporate candy. The salmonella isn't the most dangerous thing in it. Unfortunately, whereas foreign bacteria is categorized as a health hazard, they haven't come around to doing to same to high fructose corn syrup.

Jen

Needle Exchange for Hams

There has been a recall for certain Maple Leaf products after workers found syringe casings at the Ontario plant Friday night. Here's the article and a list of the products that are being recalled.

Instead of buying smacked up lunch meats from all the way across the country, try Hertel's Meats. They sell at local retailers, including Pipers Meats. They even have a nitrate free bacon that doesn't shrink up to 1/5th it's initial size when cooked like most factory bacon.

This is just another reason why we have to do everything we can to ensure our food security and to work towards maintaining a thriving meat industry right here on this yummy island.

Later,
Jen

Would like some E.coli with that salad?

If you haven't heard, there's a huge recall of all bagged spinach grown in the US due to contamination of E. coli. This is not the first time. E. coli contaminated pre-washed factory-farmed spinach has hospitalized and killed in the past.

The contaminated spinach has been traced back to one distributor, Natural Selection Foods based in California. However, it distributes spinach sold under dozens of labels. For a list, check out this article. Amongst this list is President Choice prebagged spinach.

Other brands and distributors could also carry contaminated spinach. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has advised consumers to throw out any prebagged spinach from the US.

So how much damage could one bad batch of spinach do? Well, the outbreak was originally reported yesterday in 8 states. By today, almost 100 cases have been reported in 20 states. So far, 29 victims have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure. One person has already died.

A huge portion of all the lettuce and spinach for the US and Canadian markets is grown in Salinas Valley, California. Eight of the 19 E. Coli O157:H7 lettuce or spinach related outbreaks since 1995 have originated from this area.

This is another example of how vulnerable out food supply is right now. Food security is more than just whether or not we can enough food transported over to this island. It’s a matter of whether we can trust and depend on that food to be safe for consumption. Relying on agri-corporations to supply our food is putting us at risk. One can only guess how a bacterium like E. coli which lives in the intestines of cows and other animals and is spread through contamination by shit ended up on spinach.

This is a disturbing reminder that we don’t know much about the food supply system as agri-corporate consumers. As long as we keep depending on these anonymous foreign factory farms for our food, we’re at their mercy. We have no say in how the US regulates their food. Don’t tell me that they have the FDA. The FDA is not looking out for the consumer’s best interest in the 21^st century. It’s made up of a panel of execs and expects that have deep links to food corporations.

One solution is obvious. Buy local. Buy foods from farms where you can go and see how things are handled. Where you can ask the farmer questions. As a society, we can stop relying on some foreign country to supply the bulk for our food. Especially when we are blessed with great produce and farms right in our own backyard!

That's it for now.

Jen

www.100miledietnanaimo.com