Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Why technology is not the solution



Because, unless the underlying social factors are taken care of, the technology to be developed will be the wrong kind of technology, and benefits only the powerful group that f***ed up in the first place.

To curb global warming and find alternative energy after peak oil, for example, the "scientific" solutions are biofuel, wind power and (sometimes) nuclear. Some pundits have even talked about increasing energy efficiency. But was there any mentioning of using less energy? G-d forbid, to keep the social economic system going, the total consumption gotta grow, grow and grow without limit!

So far, biofuel has jacked up the price of beer in Germany, pork in China, and caused the average US grocery bill to grow by $47. You bet that it's a bigger hit on the poor.

Meanwhile, major public subsidy goes to business interests (agricultural, energy), supposed to be "seed money" for R&D. Should their research succeed, don't even think for a moment that it benefits the public. Just look at what happened in semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. As soon as a publicly-funded research shows profitability, it's transferred to private companies which vows to recover cost and reap that many more times in profit.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Alternative theory of avian flu, and possibly SARS



The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) has an interesting article speculating on bird flu. They suggest modern style intensive poultry farming, genetic engineering, plus environmental pollution by dioxin and maybe Agent Orange are to be blamed, rather than backyard chickens and migratory birds.

When one thinks about it, folks around the world have lived, and continue to live closely with their domestic fowls in unwholesome conditions. That is not necessarily a good idea -- it's unpleasant and may spread diseases e.g. psittacosis. Before the existence of genetic engineering and industrial pollution, animals living close to humans can contribute to the creation of pretty lethal human epidemic, such as rodents and fleas to the bubonic plague. Migratory birds may carry pathogens around, too.

Still, why avian flu now and why in SE Asia in particular? There's no proof that recent changes such as industrial pollution and industrial animal farming are innocent. If fact, it not impossible that they are the real cause of the spread of avian flu. It's just a matter of economic and political power: the agribusiness behemoth gets a subsidy, while small farmers in Vietnam see their flock destroyed (sometimes without compensation), and wild migratory birds get blamed more as they are not represented in human societies at all.

This reminds me of the SARS breakout in 2002-03, because a lot of similar factors apply, and the media also blamed it on traditional small-scale animal farming. The origin place, Guangdong Province, was the earliest center of export manufacturing in China, therefore is considerably polluted. Huge animal farms may not be many there. Yet in place of them there are a large number of migrant workers who are poorly paid (hence poorly fed), living in crowded dormitories, and often the first victims of the aforementioned pollution. Viola, you got the incubator going. It's just a matter of when something deadly comes out. As Louis Pasteur allegedly said: "the microbe is nothing, the terrain is all"...

Chinese toothpaste with diethylene glycol



David Barboza of NYT has just published another expose on toxic toothpaste from China:

"But Ms. Shi and other toothpaste makers in this region said that diethylene glycol had been used in toothpaste in China for years and that producers believed it was not very harmful."

That just sounds like his theme from the last installment melamine-in gluten case: -- tragedies caused by unscrupulous and ignorant manufacturers. What he neglected to mention is that diethylene glycol is allowed in toothpaste, at least inside China. Here is a study from China concluding its "safety" in toothpaste.

The word safety was put in quote because I tend to agree with Mr. Barboza and question the Chinese study. Suppose teenagers and older people, after brushing and rinsing, do not ingest a lot of diethylene glycol. That doesn't mean individual cases of over ingestion is impossible, especially for younger children. There is just not much sense in using a toxic substance when other less dangerous polyglycols can be substituted for retaining moisture in toothpaste. In addition, according to research databases it seems China is the only country allowing this, which makes it even more suspicious.

I am all for challenging this practice the the above reasons. Yet compared to the melamine case there are two major differences:


  1. Legal (if very questionable) vs. illegal additive;
  2. Openly listed as an ingredient vs. undeclared adulteration.


Finally, I have to give Barboza credit for mentioning what I think is the root cause, although he chose not to highlight it:

“You know, if you’re in the export market, the margins are small, so people use the substitute,”...“Even one percent or half a percent price difference can matter to people here.”

Friday, May 04, 2007

What is Amilorine?



Short answer: it doesn't exist.

Long explanation: At last count there are 904 hits of "amilorine" on Google. However, there's absolutely no mentioning of it in any major scientific databases, e.g. SciFinder, Web of Science. Well, there is one find on Google Scholar. Those folks said another group studied "amilorine-sensitive channels". The group they cited, it turns out, was talking about "amiloride-sensitive channel" instead. So that only one was probably a typo.

Back in 2002, somebody did a research on the propagation of citation errors in science, and estimated that about 20% folks cite articles without reading the original. Guess the percentage is higher in online news...

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Poisoned bread and the media circus



The 2007 pet food crisis is still going strong. It looks more like a human interest (media, governments, corporations) story than pure food contamination incident. (Not that I have any trust in food safety in China, or don't have my own cats to worry about.)

The intrinsic risk of large-scale, centralized food processing


First, there is no way to make food 100% safe. Unless apples are banned from human consumption, eventually a bad one will turn up as human food somewhere. Whether it is eaten out of hand, used in an apple pie, or mixed with 10,000 other apples in a plant to produce apple sauce, however, greately changes the scale of contamination.

More decentralized food production and processing is probably not mucher safer per batch, and even less so by quantity (need to make many more smaller batches to fill the same quantity). Yet it is a lot more robust, i.e. when contamination occurs the scale will be much smaller. This is the difference between the 1996 Odwalla juice recall (one brand, recall complated in 48 hours) and the great spinach recall (most of the brands were under suspicion, and it took the FDA weeks to sort out which is actually affected).

Corporate free lunch



One prominent suggestion is tightening customs inspection. Since when did the US customs (or customs of any country) become the chief quality control agency, and is supposed to pinpoint exotic contaminations? As long as the white powery stuff imported is not heroin, their work is done.

According to ChemNutra, melamine (assuming that's the real deal) is "simply not on the radar screen for food ingredient suppliers". That's tough. But it seems pretty reasonable that whose making a profit in this business ought to shoulder the most responsibility. They don't call it "business risk" for no reason!

Another puzzle: Reportedly, the adulteration in the gluten is so high that "visible crystals" can be seen in the finished pet food. Well, shouldn't that ring a bell at Menu Foods, whether melamine was on the chemical radar or not?

Media circus



The suspicion on gluten from China emerged as early as March 30, when FDA halted import of wheat gluten from the suspected seller. A full month passed without much media discussion on food safety in China. Then, over the weekend of Apr. 29-30, huge expose came out on International Herald Tribune and New York Times, screaming about widespread melamine use in China. Now, almost all mainstream media outlets have picked it up (try searching for the price of melamine, and all you get is this s**t). While the FDA has to request special visa to get into China, these major newspapers already have staff inside the country, and can hire local freelancers if necessary. On Dec 5 last year, NYT even reported a Chinese domestic case of fake lard. Now that US food (at least pet food) supply is at stake, why did it take them so long to report?

Besides melamine, there is another chemical suspect called cyanuric acid. The mainstream media kindly explains it as "a chemical used in pool chlorination". I did some research and guess what? It turns out this stuff is also fed to cattles in the US(not to milk cows due to regulation). I can see why the reporter's reasoning though: a "pool chorination chemical" in fluffy's dinner sounds a lot more sinister than "cattle dietary supplement". Plus Archer Daniels Midland may not want consumers to know that, either.

ChemNutra's only business appears to be importing "nutritional and pharmaceutical chemicals" from China to the US. Meanwhile NYT claims melamine spiking of feed is widespread and an "open secret" in China. Putting these together, at least one party is lying because

  • If ChemNutra is telling the truth (that they are taken in by an exotic chemical in feed), then melamine use in adulteration is not common in China. But NYT would be lying.
  • If NYT is telling the truth, then ChemNutra (as a specialized importer from China) is being negligent. What's the point of using an importer who has no clue about a common kind of adulteration in the supplying country?


Silence from China



There is a news blackout on this inside China right now, and the PRC government is making as little comment as possible. I doubt they did this to protect a few small peddlers of gluten, or for a more sinister purpose such as a planned poisoning of US food supply. The most obvious explanation is that any public yielding to FDA will foster domestic demand of food safety. To clean up the food supply, a lot of stones have to be turned over. The "miraculous" 9% annual GDP growth then is likely to end. Without that miraculous growth, a lot of other issues will be open for discussion, such as pollution and corruption...

Considering the low level of food safety in China, and how much time passed without a major contamination in the US from imported food from China, in a sense the FDA is doing a pretty good job. If import keeps going, however, one day you'll hit the lottery.

My pet theories



  1. Someone in China -- either direct exporters like Xuzhou Anying, their suppliers or an individual insider one of the companies -- intentionally adulterated gluten. Due to ChemNutra's negligence, the contaminated batch reached to Menu Foods. Menu Foods could have checked the ingredients better but chose not to, either, for cost purposes.
  2. ChemNutra may knew about the adulteration but pretends it didn't. Why not? For all they knew melamine is not particularily toxic. Should s**t hits the fan, they could always point a finger at the Chinese supplier.
  3. Menu Foods may knew about it too, but figure they can afford it. A brand label has a lot more stake in this scandal, because there are a lot of other brands for consumers to choose from (i.e. the market is fragmented). But Menu Foods is just a nameless contracted manufacturer, and the largest one in north America (they produce for 17 of the top 20 retailers, 5 of the top 6 brandeds). That's a monopoly situation. After this thing's over, I'll bet that brand labels will keep using Menu Foods, because they have the scale of production and low cost (which is goes down with increasing scale) to outbid smaller producers.


To be continued...