When it comes to foods, superfoods and even nutritional supplements from
China, "organic" is largely a hoax. This is my opinion, of course, but
I've been researching the issue quite extensively as the key decision
maker for new products in the Natural News Store. And I've come to the
conclusion that "organic" from China is largely a fraud. Here's why...
First off, you're going to be shocked to learn that
there is no limit to how much mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic and aluminum is allowed in "organic" products.
It's
a fact: USDA organic standards place NO LIMITS on levels of heavy
metals contamination of certified organic foods. Even further, there is
no limit on the contamination of PCBs, BPA and other synthetic chemicals
that's allowed in certified organic foods, superfoods and supplements.
At
this point, you're probably shaking your head in disbelief and
thinking, "No, that can't be true. Organic standards must check for
heavy metals and chemical contamination, right?"
No! "Organic" certifies
a process of how food is grown or produced. It certifies that the farmer doesn't
add
pesticides, herbicides, petroleum-based fertilizer, metals or synthetic
chemicals to the crop (among other things), and it certifies that the
soil must be free from such things for a certain number of years before
organic certification is approved.
But organic certification does
nothing to address
environmental sources of pollution
such as chemtrails, contaminated irrigation water, and fallout from
industrial or chemical factories that might be nearby. A certified
organic farmer can use
polluted water on their crops and still have the crops labeled "organic."
For this reason:
the environment in which organic foods are produced is critical to the cleanliness of the final product.
Organic
farming in a clean environment produces clean, organic foods. But
organic farming in a polluted environment produces contaminated organic
foods. And China is one of the most polluted chemical cesspools on the
planet. The pictures on the right show some scenes from China, a country
suffocating under a
pollution nightmare.
As you view
these pictures, ask yourself: Would you eat food grown there? Even if it
were sold by Whole Foods and labeled "organic?"
China is an environmental nightmare
China is a nation that has virtually
no environmental regulation enforcement.
In China, anything goes: You can dump mercury into rivers. You can
spray raw human sewage sludge on crops. You can produce factory-made
chemicals and blow the waste products right into the air through
smokestacks. In China, many rivers are so toxic that, from time to time,
they actually catch on fire and burn.
It's so bad that a Chinese environmental official was recently
offered over US$30,000 to take a 20-minute swim in a local river.
He DECLINED. Why? Because the river there is so polluted that swimming in it would mean certain death.
It
is this water that's often used in "organic" food and superfood
production in China. So even though the farmer is following organic
process standards, he may be using irrigation water that's wildly
contaminated with metals, chemicals and even pesticide residues. He may
be spraying hormone drugs on the crops because there's a pharmaceutical
factory upstream.
Here's the kicker:
In a country with virtually no environmental laws, "organic" food production is largely a fraud because environmental sources contaminate the foods or superfoods being produced there.
There are some exceptions to this, by the way. Notably
goji berries
are grown at high altitude, far away from the pollution of China's
cities and rivers. Goji berries sourced from China tend to be very clean
and have very low levels of contamination. There are no doubt other
exceptions to the rule, but the difficulty is in knowing
what to trust that comes out of China.
In North America,
"organic" is legitimate
precisely because North America has far more strict environmental
standards. Organic is clean food, responsibly produced, and consistently
less contaminated than conventional food. The same is true across
Europe, where organic standards are also strict. But in China, "organic"
is often a joke. Almost a hoax, in my opinion.
And the laboratory tests bear this out. For example, we just published
an investigative story on chlorella showing that "organic" chlorella from China is polluted with nearly
ten times the aluminum level
of "organic" chlorella from Taiwan. And the cleanest chlorella we found
in terms of metals contamination was actually a non-organic chlorella
produced in Korea.
China is a nation that lacks ethics
Remember,
too, that China is a communist regime. It is a country where all
religion has been outlawed and the people are never taught ethics or
morality. They have no moral compass. Across China, the majority of the
population believes that the best way to get ahead is to CHEAT, lie and
steal, even if it means harming someone else in the process.
Remember: China is the country where they put
melamine in infant formula,
knowing that it will kill little children. China is the country where
the paint on children's toys contains obscene levels of brain-damaging
lead. China is a nation of shortcut-takers who will do
anything
to cheapen a product as long as they can cover it up and trick the
buyer. This is why "made in China" has, for decades, been synonymous
with "crap quality."
Here's a little note that will interest
pet owners:
If you buy pet treats made in China, you are murdering your pet with
the most insane chemicals imaginable. The stuff that goes into some pet
treats made in China is highly toxic and causes cancer. This is one of
the main factors behind the alarming rise of cancers among dogs and cats
in North America.
All this isn't just secondhand information, by
the way: I lived in Asia for two years and traveled extensively
throughout the region. I speak a fair amount of Mandarin (Chinese), and
I've interacted with lots and lots of people from China, Hong Kong and
Taiwan. I can tell you that
Taiwan is a country with much greater honesty, integrity and quality
than China. In Taiwan, religion is allowed and openly practiced
(Buddhism, mostly). In Taiwan, there is a sense of responsibility to
customers. There is a philosophy of striving for quality. Taiwan is to
China like revolutionary America was to the British Empire. Taiwan is a
island nation of hard-working, creative, innovative entrepreneurs, and
when I look to import products from Asia, I always try to find it in
Taiwan first because I know Taiwan means quality.
But in China, it's exactly the opposite: There is no sense of responsibility to customers. The overriding philosophy is to
screw the customer,
even on the very first order, knowing that the customer will never buy
from you again! In China, the idea is to CHEAT people rather than make
them happy. You see this all the way to the top of the government which
is, of course, a police state communist regime where laws are enforced
at gunpoint against a completely disarmed and helpless population that
has no rights. China is
a culture of corruption, deception and exploitation.
Now,
of course, there are people in China who rebel against all this. There
are exceptions to the rule, and there may even be some honest organic
food producers in China that buck the trend. Not all mainland Chinese
are bad people. Many wish to overthrow the corrupt government and
restore freedom, liberty and justice to the country. But because they
are all disarmed (China has no Bill of Rights), they are powerless
against a dictatorial government. They are slaves to the system.
Health Ranger Select brand BANS all foods, superfoods and ingredients from China except for goji berries
I
made a decision months ago to ban anything produced in China from my
own label, with the exception being goji berries. If a food, superfood
or supplement has my name on it, I will not use ingredients sourced from
China unless I know and can VERIFY the end-product cleanliness of the
product.
So if you see the "Health Ranger Select" brand or the
"Storable Organics" brand, know that it's clean and very carefully
sourced.
We source from the USA, Canada, European countries, Peru
and even Thailand for some ingredients. Mexico is acceptable for some
ingredients as well. But China is a big red flag. I simply can't trust
that most foods, superfoods or supplements from China are going to be
consistently clean and honest.
China is the kind of country where
you order a sample of a raw material -- say pomegranate juice powder --
and the first batch you receive is really clean and passes all the lab
tests. So you order 5000kg of the stuff, and when it arrives, it's all
full of lead and pesticides.
Chinese medicine herbs from China
are notoriously contaminated with lead. The same is true for green tea
and many other ingredients that naturally absorb heavy metals.
All sorts of products at Whole Foods, by the way, are grown in China but certified "organic." What a joke.
Given
that China has virtually no environmental enforcement whatsoever, the
very idea that something grown in China can be certified "organic" is
absurd. Without a clean environment, you can't product clean food even
if you follow organic growing standards.
So why do so many formulators and food companies in the USA still buy ingredients from China?
Because they're CHEAP.
Buying from China means higher profit
Here's
the dirty little secret of the natural products industry... and yes,
the "dirty" is quite literal in this case: Raw materials from China are
cheap! Across the board, raw materials (foods, superfoods, supplements)
from China are about 1/4th the cost of materials grown in North America
or Europe.
This means getting your ingredients from China grants
your product a lot more profit in the marketplace. For those selling
through Whole Foods -- whose product shelves are littered with
ingredients made in China -- this profit margin is essential to economic
survival.
If you're buying a superfood powder sold at Whole
Foods and paying $50 at retail, the actual ingredient cost that goes
into that superfood canister is often as little as $5. So sourcing those
materials from China is crucial to having the margins. Whole Foods
might only pay your company $22 or so for a product they sell at $50. So
your company has to buy the materials, pay for shipping, insurance,
labor, packaging, formulations and everything else and still somehow
make a profit to stay in business. So you source from China. You make a
really nice-looking label, you get it "certified organic" with a nice
USDA logo on it, and you sell it to Whole Foods which adds another layer
of legitimacy to the product.
But inside the bottle, there could
be mercury hiding in there. Or pharmaceutical residues. Or pesticide
residues. Or just about anything, including melamine.
Now, obviously Whole Foods has a level of quality control in place, and they do require C of A's for products they carry. But
China is expert at FAKING these documents and tricking importers, formulators and manufacturers.
In
China, the idea of forging a laboratory analysis document is no big
deal. Fabricating fake documents is routine. You have to understand the
philosophy of these people living without any code of ethics, surviving
under a police state communist regime: There are no ethics. No values.
No moral compass. Forging a fake lab report is no different to them than
planting seeds: it's just one more step needed to make money. There is
no moral difference in their minds between telling the truth and lying.
It's a "relativistic" morality philosophy.
I'm not saying all
people in China are liars and deceivers. But a lot of them are. Anyone
who has actually lived there for any length of time knows exactly what
I'm talking about. This is a country where deceptive manufacturers take
white sesame seeds and coat them in toxic black ink just to sell them as
"black sesame seeds." This is a country where infant formula producers
spike their formula with kidney-destroying melamine in order to make an
extra five cents a pound, even while killing babies by the thousands.
THEY DON'T CARE. China is a nation that has abandoned morality and even
attacked it. This is a country where the Falun Gong group of meditation
advocates and yoga practitioners is arrested and thrown in prison by an
extremely oppressive, dictatorial government.
Look, cultures are
different everywhere around the world. You want to hang out with really
nice, intelligent and honest people? Get yourself some
Dutch friends. They're the most upstanding, moral, educated bunch of folks you'll ever meet.
You
want to hang out with highly-innovative rule followers? Get yourself
some German friends. They follow the rules. And they're smart,
innovative people on top of that. Brilliant minds. Some of the greatest
scientists in history came out of Berlin.
You want some friends
who are wildly creative? Those are Americans. Americans make the best
movies, the best music (well, along with UK musicians anyway), and a lot
of the best computer software on the planet. Americans are rebels. They
break the rules and forge a new path. America is a nation founded on
rebellion.
But if you're looking for people who will stab you in
the back in a business deal, go the China. There, you will find the most
back-stabbing, dishonest cheaters and liars you'll probably ever meet,
short of Nigera's "Prince Nubula" whose emails promise you'll receive a
million dollars if you only send them $5,000 first.
Why you won't hear this truth anywhere else
I
know that telling the truth is unpopular and not politically correct.
I'm not interested in winning a popularity contest. What I'm doing here
is flat-out
telling the truth that most other people are too
afraid to say on their own: The very idea of "organic" coming out of
China is a disturbing contradiction.
And organic standards have a
huge gap in the fact that they don't require foods to actually be free
from mercury or other contaminants. Overall, organic is a wonderful
standard and I've been a strong advocate of organic, but when a "USDA
organic" label is slapped on a product grown in China, you really have
to scratch your head and say, "Yeah, it might be organic, but is it
clean?"
It may be, but you just don't know until you test it. "Organic" grown in the USA can be
assumed to be clean, but organic grown in China must be assumed contaminated unless proven otherwise.
Until
China enforces some really strict environmental standards, "organic"
from China is largely a fraud in my opinion. It's a hoax. You can lie to
yourself and say, "Well it's ORGANIC so it must be clean!" but you'll
be swallowing mercury, lead, pesticides and other synthetic chemicals in
various amounts.
Laboratory tests confirm everything I'm telling
you here. This is the dirty little secret of the organic food industry
that nobody's talking about.
China's environmental nightmare
Just how polluted is China's environment? As I mentioned above, it's so bad that a Chinese environmental official was recently
offered over US$30,000 to take a 20-minute swim in a local river. He declined the offer, as would any sane person.
Are
these the same rivers that are being used to produce "organic" crops in
China? You have to wonder. A river can be so inundated with smelting
factory runoff and chemical pollution that even bacteria struggle to
survive in it; yet this water can be legally sprayed on crops that are
exported to America as "organic."
If you buy "organic" foods, superfoods or supplements grown in China, you need to know about this.
As
The Guardian reports:
A
recent government study found that groundwater in 90% of China's cities
is contaminated, most of it severely. The head of China's ministry of
water resources said last year that up to 40% of the country's rivers
are "seriously polluted", and an official report from last summer found
that up to 200 million rural Chinese have no access to clean drinking
water.
By the way, this is another story altogether, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that
China is headed for an environmental collapse.
The country has polluted itself far beyond the point of long-term
sustainable life. Children are being born as mutants. Rivers support no
fish life. Soils are building up obscene levels of contaminants and
becoming so toxic that crop yields are affected. Cities are so filled
with airborne pollution that the mere act of
breathing causes cancer. And on top of that, China's one-child policy has resulted in
mass gendercide
where baby girls are routinely -- and yes, I mean ROUTINELY --
murdered, drowned, suffocated, etc., because the family wants a son, not
a daughter.
In its quest for economic power,
China has poisoned itself to death,
and now it's only a matter of time before the nation collapses in a
cesspool of toxicity and lies. The economic "boom" of China is nearly
over, and it will be followed by an environmental implosion so huge and
disgusting that the world will be absolutely horrified. Remember: China
is so corrupt that it won't stop factories from openly dumping toxic
waste directly into the groundwater supplies. Instead of acknowledging
the source of pollution, Chinese officials simply
accept bribes and cover it up. The corruption in China is so deeply rooted in the culture that honesty and accountability can never overcome the deception.
With
some exceptions, when you buy food grown in China, you are buying food
produced in the most toxic environment on planet Earth, grown by some of
the most deceptive and most corrupt liars and back-stabbers on the
planet, all ruled by one of the most dictatorial and tyrannical
governments history has ever known. That about sums it up.
Ultimately, China has a
terminal environmental crisis
on its hands, compounded by an eternally corrupt, dictatorial communist
regime government that oppresses freedom and outlaws religion while
forcing families to kill their own baby girls under its population
control mandates.
In summary, China suffers from:
• An environmental nightmare
• An almost complete abandonment of morals and integrity
• A deeply corrupt communist police state political system that mandates the mass murder of baby girls
Is this the vibe you really want to be putting into your body?
Photo credits:
Adam Cohn:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcohn/4267886203/
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/01/china-pollution-leads-to-end-of-low-...
http://theboldcorsicanflame.files.wordpress.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Factory_in_China.jpg
Copyright belongs to username "High Contrast"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beijing_smog_comparison_August_2005...