"health and safety" news and stories

Last week CNN reported (and we posted about it) that food vendors in Bejing, China were selling steamed buns filled with a combination of "chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning."

On the heels of reports of contaminated toothpaste, dog food and frozen fish from China, news agencies from around the world were willing to believe these reports of tainted street food. However, it seems now that the story was fabricated by an employee at Bejing TV in order to get a ratings boost. I've heard of folks in the TV world taking extreme measures for ratings, but this seems to be a bit much.

Hey, we're not just talking about that take-out chow mein from the hole-in-the-wall on the corner that just tastes like cardboard.

Apparently, small, usually illegally-run operations across China have been cutting costs by using cheap ingredients, and in State TV's undercover investigation, sometimes substituting with things that aren't even food. In the Chaoyang district of Beijing, steamed buns called bao were filled with cardboard that had been softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning. The article over at CNN has more graphic details of how the cardboard is collected from the ground and "made" into the bao's filling.

Kind of makes you thankful for the regulations we have here in the US, huh?

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