Chinese Strawberries Off the Hook in Germany
Cypriot inspectors have found arsenic in the frozen squid from China. But at least kids in Germany c…Cypriot inspectors have found arsenic in the frozen squid from China. But at least kids in Germany can eat their Chinese strawberries again.
German health authorities have given the all-clear after a recent poisoning of 11,000 children at hundreds of schools in Berlin and four other German states. School cafeterias in eastern Germany were primarily affected, but improper food handling at industrial kitchens was seen as a possible cause.
German consumer agencies had traced the outbreak to a single batch of berries. The agencies' strawberry statement did not identify the source country, although a spokesperson for the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety told Food Production Daily that the berries "all came from the same batch imported from China" and a news report claimed the strawberries were grown, harvested and frozen in Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius, in Shandong Province.
Chinese food exports to Europe, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel, nearly doubled between 2005 and 2010. In Germany, food imports from China are up 26% since 2009. Wu Heng, a graduate history student in Shanghai, has taken it on himself to start a website devoted to exposing alleged health and safety issues,
such as cancer-causing additives in meat.
The name of the site, Zhichuchuangwai, means "throw it out the window." It comes from a story of President Theodore Roosevelt having thrown his breakfast sausage out a window after reading "The Jungle," Upton Sinclair's 1905 novel that exposed the meatpacking industry in Chicago.
"Roosevelt's act of throwing his sausage out of the window became a watershed in the history of food safety," Wu told China Daily.
"I hope my website can play a role as well in raising the alarm in our country's food safety."
