No, not my ice cream too!!

First it was French wine - now it's ice cream.

Brands including Cold Stone, Dairy Queen and Baskin Robbins have been found to contain excessive bacteria, Shanghai's consumer protection bureau announced yesterday.

DQ Blizzards were found to contain 4,600 parts per 100 milliliters of coliform bacteria, 10 times the national limit of 450 parts per 100 ml.

The ice cream was produced on June 25 at the Xujiahui Road outlet of DQ, the commission said.

Shanghai Shida Catering Management Co Ltd, DQ's largest Chinese partner, said the store closed for a time to do its own checks, but said the commission's results didn't mean DQ products had any quality problems.  "It is the result from only one cup of ice cream sold at only one store of DQ," said Yang Yating with Shida's marketing department. I wonder if DQ in North America would support this guys rationale. DQ has more than 90 outlets in Shanghai

The amount of bacteria found in Cold Stone's original flavor ice cream reached 32,000 CFU (colony-forming units) per ml, compared with the national limit of 25,000 per ml, the commission said. It was produced on June 26 at Cold Stone's Pacific Department Store branch.  Tu Yijing, from Cold Stone's brand promotion department, said she had not been informed of the results. Cold Stone has about 30 stores in the city.
  
The ice creams were among 22 sample products bought by the commission from 22 outlets randomly, it said. Ten failed tests, including Chinese brands, all for bacterial problems.

Some ice cream producers have very poor awareness of food safety, the commission said, and it suggested that the authorities should strengthen the supervision and training of producers of ice cream.

So there you go, we've got apples with insectcide, wine with pesticide and now ice cream with coliform bacteria. This is a great country if you want to loose weight.

The interesting thing is we are eating at great restaurants serving really good food (at least as far as we can tell). Neither of us has ever been food poisoned and we have both gained weight so as weird as the food seems to be, no complaints from us as far as our own personal dining is concerned.
 

Trip Advisor would love this

I can't resist sharing this article from today's Shanghai Daily.

A four-star hotel (I wonder who is doing that rating system) that repeatedly reported food vanishing in the past several weeks yesterday finally netted one of the thieves - a weasel.

Several weasels infested the Kingtown Hotel on Hongmei Road about 15 days ago. They hid inside the hotel kitchens and started stealing food. It all began with the sudden disappearance of 10 pork chops a chef had just cooked. He put the meat on plates and turned around to do something else. When he turned back, the pork chops were gone.

After that, instances of missing meat dishes were reported at the hotel every day, mostly at night. The mystery was solved when staff spotted a weasel 50 centimeters long.

But weasels are smart and swift. Workers couldn't catch them. The animals were thought to have hidden under the wooden floor, said Gu Peihong, a manager of the hotel.  Wild animal protection authorities in Minhang District arrived on Tuesday, setting up a cage to capture them. Weasels that are caught are released into nature, authorities said. Yellow weasels, once common in the city, now are rare.

By yesterday, only one weasel was caught and the others were still "at large," a hotel staff member said. So be warned - if you plan to dine at the Kingtown Hotel you'd better have someone guard your plate if you have to go to the washroom.

Chateau Lafite Monsieur?

Looks like we'll be taking a pass on expensive French wines while we are here. Shanghai police said yesterday they busted a ring of six people producing and selling fake Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

More than 4,000 bottles of fake Chateau Lafite were found in hideouts in the suburban Fengxian and Minhang districts of the city, police said yesterday. They estimated the value of the bust at about 10 million yuan (US$1.6 million).

On April 5, the police, working with the industry and commerce department, raided a company at Fengcheng Town and found hundreds of counterfeit labels and caps and a sealing machine. They followed the clues of less than great tasting wine and at a warehouse in Fengxian and Minhang districts, they confiscated 1,678 bottles of fake Chateau Lafite and 684 bottles of fake Chateau Margaux.

Police said the ring had purchased red wine from Hebei and Shandong provinces (known for producing cheap red wine) and bought caps, labels and packages from Guangdong and Shandong provinces and Shanghai to make fake Chateau Lafite. The suspects sold the fake wine to less than sophisticated buyers (mostly Chinese millionaires with no idea what good wine should taste like) in provincial regions of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, Shandong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guangxi.

As they continued their search, police found yet another warehouse with more than 2,000 bottles of fake Chateau Lafite.

The fake French wine was one of nearly 900 infringement cases solved by the city's police this year, said Yang Lieyi, deputy director of the commercial crime department of Shanghai police.

Yang said yesterday that police had detained more than 1,900 suspects in the first seven months for intellectual property crime, and the total value of illicit money reached nearly 300 million yuan (US$47 million).

So as of now just to be on the safe side, we'll be adding expensive French wine to the list of fake stuff we have to watch out for.

Will that be a little pesticide with your bordeaux Monsieur

In a few years some have forecasted that China will become the second largest producer of wine in the world. An article today in The Shanghai Daily sure helped me decide if I should be one of the consumers helping to grow their market share.

Seems a report was published last week that indicated some Chinese red wine on the market contained excessive levels of harmful chemicals. The Securities Market Weekly said 10 samples of red wine from three domestic wine makers, including China's leading Changyu winery, contained excessive levels of two pesticide residues, carbendazim and metalaxyl.

But not to be concerned - The Ministry of Health confirmed yesterday that in fact pesticide residue in wine manufactured here in China is below the country's limits so we should all stop worrying and continue to drink Chinese red wine.

Yan Weixing, a researcher with the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said pesticide residue, which he believed was unavoidable in a modernized world, would pose no threat to humans if it was controlled and its risks fully assessed before use. What can I say - no problem if it is controlled and all the risks fully assessed.

"A certain amount of pesticide within the limits set by national standards will not pose a threat to health because pesticide residue is unavoidable in food," Yan said yesterday. A friend sent me a note a few weeks ago that said "get out before they kill you".

We aren't leaving but there will be no Chinese wine entering our bodies.

Mind your own business and stay safe

A few months ago we all read about the little Chinese two year old who was hit by several trucks and left in the street to die while people just walked on by. If you want to know why things like this happen, the following should put some of it in perspective.

Yesterday a young teenager was hit as she jumped in front of a truck to grab a one-year-old girl who strayed into traffic. Are you ready for this - According to traffic police in Foshan City in southern Guangdong Province that teenager must assume some financial responsibility for her own injuries. The truck hit both girls however the teen is credited with saving the little girl's life.

The Guangzhou Daily newspaper quoted police as saying the teenager's sudden movement impeded traffic safety and caused an accident that led to her right foot being broken. Therefore the police went on, she must share responsibility for her injuries. She is presently at Foshan No.1 People's Hospital waiting for a toe to be amputated because of a severe infection.

The little girl had fractures in her left foot and is being treated in the intensive care unit in a hospital in the provincial capital Guangzhou after two of her toes had to be amputated. To add insult to injury, the police said the little girl also has to share responsibility for her injuries due to her violation of the traffic rules.

Police also said a minivan driver who parked illegally was also cited for hindering the truck driver's view of the girls. He too is partial responsibility in the crash.

So there it is - be a good samaritan and try to save a life and you wind up in trouble. The only thing not mentioned here which I assume will probably happen sooner or later is the truck driver who hit the girls will come after them to pay for the repairs to his truck.

Green tea keeps them guessing

We just got back to Shanghai from a great holiday in Lijiang China and trekked the 28 bends of Tiger Leaping Gorge - an amazing bit of geography to say the least.

On the way there we drove by some apple orchards and guess what - as reported in a previous blog posting, all the apples were neatly covered with brown paper bags which according to the newspaper where I found the original story,  all contain dangerous pesticides. So much for eating any more apples here.

But I digress, the issue in this posting is green tea? 

An undercover reporter for a "60 Minutes" type TV program here substituted green tea as a urine sample at various hospitals and wouldn't you know it - he was diagnosed with several different ailments. To start the experiment he went to a major public hospital in Beijing for a health check up where he was judged to be heathy and in good shape.

Then he went to several private men's health hospitals and when asked for a urine sample, he gave the clinics a small vial of green tea as a sample.

He was stunned when doctors at a hospital in Shijiazhuang, in Beijing's neighboring Hebei Province, told him they found an excessive level of white blood cells in his "urine," indicating that he was suffering prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate gland, and orchitis, swelling in the testicles - hmmm, that sounds serious. A doctor told him that he would need to undergo seven days of treatment, with each day costing 546 yuan (US$86).

At another private hospital in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, a doctor checked the same green tea sample and diagnosed that he had spermatoceles, or cysts near his reproductive organs, and needed immediate surgery, costing 5,000 yuan.

What is even more bizzare is that after the story broke some doctors questioned the reporter's method of using green tea to judge the accuracy of medical tests. They told the Shanghai Daily newspaper it was very "unprofessional" for the reporter to use green tea as sample. How's that for a great response .
 
Still others said the journalist shouldn't have set out to trap hospitals because a doctor should not have to worry about whether a urine sample is authentic. Otherwise, they said, it would be a waste of medical resources to verify samples.

"Equipment is designed to check biochemical indicators like white cell counts in urine or blood,  not for whether the sample is urine or green tea," said Dr Wang Guisong from Shanghai's Renji Hospital.

There is something here  that I must be missing but as most expats say TIC - This is China.

Urinine to tell you a new story

We are now back in Shanghai for the rest of the summer and what better way to start a summer blog than tell you about the shortage of urine facing Chinese Pharma companies.

Seems all of a sudden plastic buckets are showing up at toilets in some elementary schools in an east China city that are being used by pharmaceutical companies to collect urine to make medicine, a national TV station reported.

It was previously reported in the Chinese media that residents in Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi Province were surprised to see the red plastic buckets at boys' toilets at schools and shocked to see workers taking the buckets, full of urine to trucks every afternoon.

"Why you might ask are people bothering to collect and transport boys' urine especially when this is not virgin egg season?"

In response, some schools told China Central Television that a pharmaceutical company was collecting the urine to extract urokinase, a product that dissolves blood clots and which is widely used in the treatment of thrombotic diseases.  The schools said they weren't being paid to provide the urine.

Here's the real issue - pharmaceutical companies are finding it more and more difficult to collect urine because of improved hygiene in China's public toilets. How do you like that!!

Pharmaceutical companies used to collect urine by placing buckets at public toilets the station said. Large amounts were needed as only dozens of grams of the product could be abstracted from one ton of human urine.

But with the improvement in hygiene, the companies are no longer allowed to place buckets at toilets in major cities and they have to head to small villages or seek other ways of collecting urine.

A manager surnamed Yu with a company that was collecting pupils' urine told the TV station that some schools rejected their requests by saying that the buckets would be too smelly.  To make matters worse, Chinese pharmaceutical companies producing urokinase are facing strong competition from foreign companies who see China as the ideal place to collect urine given its huge population and I would guess very few ways to collect it in their own countires.

Medical experts are calling on residents to support urine collection at public toilets to ensure supplies so when you come to visit the small towns and villages of China, do your part and stop by any urinal you see that has a red bucket and make a donation.

Not just any woman in China can be an astronaut

When it comes to women in space, the Chinese have got it all figured out.

Their new Tiangong-1 space module has been specially designed for females, as the country's first woman astronaut will join the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft docking mission this week and live in the Tiangong for 13 days.


Despite the module being only 15 cubic meters inside, the female astronaut will have a separate toilet and bedroom that is soundproof to protect her privacy, Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology, said yesterday. How's that for luxury!

"She will also be able to take a sponge bath with a larger water supply than that of her male counterparts and even bring some specially made cosmetics into space," said Pang. Take that you smelly men.

Two women pilots from the Wuhan Flight Unit, including a backup, were picked for the mission. Either Liu Yang or Wang Yaping will become the nation's first woman in space, said Qi Faren, former chief designer of the Shenzhou spaceship series.

They were selected from 15 women who met the most stringent guidelines set by Chinese scientists.
1) They must be married
2) They must have given birth naturally
3) They must have no scars on their body
4) They must not exude any body odor.

Our good Dr Pang says a scar might open and start bleeding in space and the cramped conditions would intensify body odor. They have just thought of everything

And here is the kicker for all you married ladies who gave birth naturally - Xu Xianrong, a professor with the General Hospital of the PLA Air Force, said the female astronauts must be married and have given birth naturally because this ensures their body and mental condition are mature enough. And these folks are sending a rocket ship into space - makes you wonder!!!

Dr Pang said added that female astronauts tend to be more "keen and sensitive with better communication skills than their male counterparts." He added women were also good at dealing with relationships with their space partners, which would be an important issue on a long mission such as a trip to Mars.

An apple a day keeps the .......

As I sat down to breakfast this morning with my yogurt and apples I opened the Shanghai Daily News to read the following headline "Apples ripen in toxic bags". After choking and thinking twice about the next swallow, I read that the Shandong Provincial Agricultural Bureau is probing allegations that paper bags coated with pesticide are widely used to cover apples growing on trees in two major apple growing areas in east China - a region that supplies billions of kilograms of apples to cities all across China  and also accounts for over half of all the apples sold in Shanghai. That made me feel better - I have a 50/50 chance I'm eating an apple that was not coated with pesticides.

According to a bureau official surnamed Su it seems that young apples are covered in pesticide coated bags until they grow to full size. Local farmers  buy the pesticide-coated bags from unlicensed workshops to keep their apples from getting worms and to maintain a fresh shiny look.

These unlicensed manufacturers have so far refused to disclose the ingredients used in coating the interior of their bags however it is believed they contain highly toxic pesticides including asomate and tuzet and a mixture of thiram, ziram and urbacid - none of which I recognize but they all sound nasty. One manufacturer is quoted as saying a sack of pesticide costing 30 Yuan ($4.70 US) can coat 20,000 bags selling for 1,000 Yuan or $160.00 US.

An orchard owner says almost all orchards are using these bags because grocery stores and restaurants are demanding that all apples they sell have a perfect appearance.

So it looks like apples now join a long list of other goods that come off our shopping list or we start buying imported ones. So does An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away? Im not so sure anymore.
 

It was only a matter of time

China yesterday called on foreign consulates to stop releasing their own air quality readings. I was wondering when this would happen given the wide variences in reporting that I blogged about a few weeks ago

The Government is now saying only they are authorized to monitor and publish air quality information and data. Here is the party line from Wu Xiaoqing, a vice environmental minister. He said "other sources may not be standardized or as rigorous as ours is". Now that's called Chutzpah!!

The US Embassy in Beijing and the US consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou currently release PM2.5 readings on an hourly basis. PM2.5 particles are a risk to health because they are small enough to lodge deep in the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.

Later, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a press briefing: "Of course, if the foreign embassies want to collect air quality information for their own staff or diplomats, I think that is their own affair, but we believe that this type of information should not be released to the public." Of course it should not be released - why cause the public to be concerned about air quality when it is completely safe.

The sometimes sharp differences in air quality readings released by Chinese urban environmental watchdogs and those from the US consular authorities have stirred great debate among China's increasingly pollution-aware public. The US consular practice attracted public attention last year when Beijing was troubled by serious smog. The sharp variances in air quality reports released by the Beijing environmental watchdog and by the American Embassy spurred heated discussion.

The air quality yesterday in Shanghai reported by the government environmental authority was "good," similar to the "moderate" to "good" levels released by the US Consulate in the city. But there was controversy on May 14, for example, when the local government said the air quality in Shanghai was "good," while the US Consulate rated it "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

Wu said: "People may have noticed that the official PM2.5 readings released by Beijing and Shanghai watchdogs are basically the same as those released by some consular operations. However, the interpretations of air quality are sharply different.

As I said in a previous post the issue is how one interprets the air quality results. Wu said "It's because other countries use the air quality standards of their own country to evaluate air conditions here. That's obviously unreasonable." That's another Chutzpah quote worth noting. Yes of course it is unreasonable - in countries where clean air is a given why shouldn't the bar be set high. In developing countries with mass amounts of pollution in the air, you have to take that into account and set the bar lower - peoples health does not really enter into the equation.

Last night, the US air quality results were still available online and I hope they remain online - in the meantime I have to go and get my puffer :)