Megan Shank dot com

The older I get, the more convinced I am that organic fruits and vegetables and natural meats are the way to go. I envy my parent’s ability to eat only what they grow and trade with neighbors around their Nebraska farm. They grow organic produce of all stripes and blanche and freeze and can and pickle whatever they need for the winter. In Shanghai, we have the Ostore and Carrefour, and when we’re too busy or too poor for those, we suck it up at the open markets and hope we don’t read anything in the paper like this:

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
China produce sold in HK hazardous: Greenpeace

LAI YING-KIT and AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Updated at 6.28pm:
Greenpeace on Tuesday said tests showed highly toxic pesticides were present in fruit imports from the mainland being sold in Hong Kong.

The environmental group said it had collected 10 samples of strawberries and tangerines from six local wet markets for tests earlier this month. Of these, five samples - all mainland imports - were found to contain toxic chemicals.

One tangerine sample, from a Tse Wan Shan market, contained 13 pesticides, including the banned chemical DDT.

A strawberry sample, from a Ma On Shan market, was tainted with highly toxic methamidophos, which is prohibited in the mainland, the group said.

Greenpeace said the pesticides could damage the nervous system and cause other long-term health problems.

Local TV footage showed group representatives dumping baskets of tainted fruits at the entrance of the Centre for Food Safety in Admiral, criticising officials for failing to prevent the import of contaminated produce.

Greenpeace spokeswoman Apple Chow Yuen-ping said the group had demanded the government draw up a timetable for legislation to ban contaminated fruit and vegetables imported into Hong Kong.

“As yet, the government has not enacted any legislation on fruit and vegetable imports, leading to the influx of tainted products. We now strongly call for a timetable for such legislation,” she said.

Greenpeace also cast doubt on the accuracy of a government food test last year which cleared 350 fresh fruit samples of any contamination.

The government food and environmental hygiene department could not immediately be reached for comment.

The findings are the latest in a line of scandals surrounding food imported from China, on which Hong Kong relies for most of its fresh produce.

Imports of many species of farmed fish, eels and eggs from China were banned last year after cancer-causing chemicals were found in some samples.

There have been other recent scares over pork from China as well as poultry imports amid increasing numbers of bird flu outbreaks in the region and elsewhere.

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