This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 22 May 2007, by Steve Leckie.
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22 May 07
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Earlier this month, state media reported that cancer became China's top killer last year, and put the blame on pollution, heavy use of additives to make animals grow faster, and pesticides.
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Aside from garlic and peas, there's also ginger, tomatoes, water chestnuts, the edible root burdock, apples, oranges, exotic fruits like loquat or pomelo, fish, seafood, cereals, fruit juices, nuts, tea and candy. The only meat imported is canned pork and sausage casings.
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Over the past year, the data show that China has consistently had the most shipment rejections of any country. Last month, China had 257 rejections. The next highest were Mexico and India, with 140 and 122, respectively.
The rejections – captured even though a mere 1 per cent of all shipments are inspected in the U.S. – were for everything from filthy salted bean cubes to unsafe colourants in jujubes, from dangerous additives, such as dulcin (a sweetener believed to be carcinogenic) in dried fruit and nitrofuran (an antibiotic banned in Canada) in breaded shrimp, to banned drugs in all sorts of fish.
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Food imports from China have exploded over the past decade, rising nearly 300 per cent to more than $705 million last year, according to Statistics Canada. About half of that is fresh fruits and vegetables, of which China is now this country's fifth largest supplier. Another big category is fish and seafood.
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Vic Carnevale points to the piled-up cases of garlic. On the right side they're from Mexico. On the left, from China. "Those are $55 a case," Carnevale, president of Veg-Pak Product Ltd., a vegetable wholesaler at the terminal, says of the Mexican garlic. Then he points to the left. "Those? $13."
"See those (Chinese) peas?" he continues, dodging hurried buyers in the aisle. "Ten dollars a case. In Canada you couldn't do it for that price if everybody worked for free!"
Every year Carnevale gets more and more fresh produce from China. In the span of just a few years, China has become one of the world's biggest exporters of food. It has become the leading exporter of fruits and vegetables, food additives and ingredients.
"They're coming on stronger and stronger," Carnevale says. "They're going to take over."
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