We Are Smog Eaters

A 2-year study released last Tuesday by the Chinese ministry of agriculture suggests that, despite earlier projections, agriculture in China is responsible for the majority of its ground and water pollution.

"Fertilisers and pesticides have played an important role in enhancing productivity but in certain areas improper use has had a grave impact on the environment," he said. "The fast development of livestock breeding and aquaculture has produced a lot of food but they are also major sources of pollution in our lives." (source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/09/china-farms-pollution)

As you may have heard from widely publicized reports in the last number of years, Chinese agriculture and aquaculture are not only unregulated but go largely uninspected by Canadian authorities upon their receipt into our food supply. You usually don't get to see where your produce comes from when you buy it at Safeway, but I can assure you that, from inspecting the cases we receive at restaurants, a lot of the cheapest produce that travels well (garlic, ginger, spices, and even lots of fruit) is Chinese. Unless you're very, very careful, I'm sure you eat it every single day.

Aquaculture is especially dangerous – some commonly used Chinese antibiotics have proven to be toxic and carcinogenic, and these things are going straight into our bodies and straight into Asian waters.

I have a nasty little habit of checking the “product of” labels on seafoods that are brought into the coolers of establishments I work at, and I can tell you with authority that any crab, in particular, that is not labeled as OceanWise is coming from Chinese crab farms – Aquastar is a brand that sells seafood to Sysco on the super cheap, and almost any high-volume restaurant you sit down to eat at orders a lot of their product from Sysco (or Neptune – same shit, different stall). What's more, I intermittently look at the boxes in particular and I have NEVER found a single Aquastar crab box that has the lot number or “inspected by” areas filled out or stamped. This shit doesn't get inspected – it would have a stamp if it had been, right? They don't even know what the lot number is, so if Aquastar ever had to recall a particular batch of deadly crab, cost-cutting chefs wouldn't even know if the crab in their coolers was in question.

Do you need to wait for any more reasons to take an interest in where your food comes from? Irresponsibly and unsafely produced food not only destroys the environment (apparently, in China, faster than all other industries if you include the pollutive output of fertilizer production) but injects chemical evil directly into your body. It's not that I want to necessarily scare you here, I just want to help you realise that when you think of the “big bad Chinese pollution machine” you probably think of coal-burning smokestacks... Maybe it's time you start thinking about that bag of frozen seafood you just bought from Safeway. You might as well be driving a Hummer... and piping the exhaust straight into the cabin.