Recycled Cooking Oil: Latest Hazard in China?

By DAVID BARBOZA

China has repeatedly been hit by food safety scandals over the past few years, including contaminated milk, eggs and animal feed and the selling of diseased pigs. In 2007, the head of the State Food and Drug Administration was executed for failing to properly police the country’s food and drug industry, and China announced a major food safety crackdown.

Recycled Cooking Oil?

The latest scandal is “Recycled Cooking Oil”.

Regulators are investigating whether restaurants throughout China are creating food hazards by cooking with recycled oil, some tainted with food waste, and prominence given to the issue in the state-controlled media suggests that the problem could be widespread.

Last November, regulators in southern China raided several workshops for turning discarded waste — possibly even sewage — into cooking oil.

Fake green peas: Latest food scandal.

But this week alone, state newspapers have reported that regulators found “unsafe artificial green peas” in Hunan Province and some 20,000 pounds of “toxic vegetables” in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Those vegetables had excessive pesticide residues, according to a government Web site.

"The peas were an unnatural color and had a penetrating odor. After 20 minutes of cooking, the peas did not turn soft but the water turned green," the report said.

Source: The New York Times Asia Pacific

LINUNDUS says ...

Keep your eyes peeled when buying foodstuffs in your next shopping.