Dirty chopsticks picked up in new China scare

[Ban Hammer 13,346]

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of Chinese food and product safety scares.

Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys.

Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of recycled disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said.

The owner, identified only by his surname Wu, said he had sold the recycled chopsticks for 0.04 yuan a pair and made an average of about 1,000 yuan ($130) a day.

Wu, who had no license to sell the goods, said he had sold 100,000 pairs a day when business was good.

China, on track to overtake the United States this year as the world's second-largest exporter, lacks the manpower to enforce food and drug safety regulations at home or for export. Imports are generally carefully scrutinized.

A lack of business ethics and a spiritual vacuum after China embraced economic reforms in the late 1970s have been blamed for unscrupulous business practices and corruption.

In Guangzhou, capital of booming Guangdong province in south China, Mayor Zhang Guangning vowed to bankrupt serious violators of food and product safety.

The Hong Kong owner of a Guangdong manufacturer at the centre of a recall of millions of Chinese-made toys by U.S. giant Mattel had committed suicide, according to Hong Kong media.

China has said the world should have faith in the "made-in-China" label and that a spate of product recalls has been unfair, biased and politically motivated.

"No country can guarantee their food to be 100 percent safe, but if one in 100 or even in 1,000 of our products has quality problems, we will deal with it seriously," Commerce Minister Bo Xilai said on Tuesday when meeting former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

"China strongly opposes (some countries) extending individual economic and trade problems, and thus conducting trade protection," Bo said in a report on the ministry's Web site.

In the latest in a series of #######-for-tat measures, China has accused the United States of exporting substandard soybean shipments to China and requested "effective measures" be taken.

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[essjay 0]

Nasty!!

[dj1206 0]

So yucky!

[Caladan 19]

You know, it's China's fault that the products are made shoddily, but it's the U.S.'s fault for letting their poisonous ####### in the country. Who is falling down on the job?

[JODO 2]

Get it together China!

Grosssssssss

[Sinergy 3]

Well who knows how long they have been doing this. I mean didnt we just recently begin inspecting everything coming from china? this is gross

[Ban Hammer 13,346]

Well who knows how long they have been doing this. I mean didnt we just recently begin inspecting everything coming from china? this is gross

and you thought that was varnish on the chopsticks........

[Nessa 23]

gross.

[Scott & Lai 12]

It's even worse than the article indicates. Even the new chopsticks are less than safe. I've seen how they are made and processed, and the problems are much more widespread than just one factory.

[Jasman0717 9]

I hope Benihanas didn't buy any

[Mags 112]

Aww, that's disgusting.

[almaty 19]

yikes,....capitalism in action..(china style)

Edited August 22, 2007 by almaty

[Ban Hammer 13,346]

now if we can just get these two countries talking, china and japan.....

Japan eyes chopsticks for biofuel

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan will try to turn the millions of wooden chopsticks that go discarded each year into biofuel to ease the country's energy shortage, officials said Wednesday.

Biofuels are seen as an alternative clean energy resource that can reduce dependence on Middle East oil and lessen the impact of global warming. Japan has virtually no natural energy resources of its own.

Restaurants and convenience stores generally hand out disposable, wooden chopsticks without asking. Each of Japan's 127 million people uses an average of 200 sets a year, meaning 90,000 tons of wood, according to government data.

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plans to set up boxes to collect used chopsticks, ministry official Toyohisa Aoyama said.

"We will look at the pluses and minuses, including to greenhouse gas emissions, of the process of collecting the chopsticks, carrying them to facilities and then producing the biofuel," he said.

Disposable chopsticks have historically been a cash cow for Japan's forestry industry, which says it uses timber from thinning that would have otherwise been dumped.

But today about 90 percent of chopsticks used in Japan are imported from China, mostly using bamboo and aspen timber, Aoyama said.

The ministry will seek a budget to study the recycling project. It is also hoping to study turning inedible products such as straw into biofuel to run cars.

Ethanol, the best-known biofuel, is derived from food such as sugar beets, wheat, corn or sugarcane.

Rising reliance on biofuels over the next decade threatens to drive up food prices in poor countries, the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said last month.

Earlier this month, a Chinese food association called for an end to the use of disposable chopsticks to make a "green" Olympics next year, saying 45 billion pairs were thrown away in China every year.

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[Cassandra+Yuibi 0]

That's beyond disgusting.

And LOL at the Japan article. I'm not really surprised by it though, considering you get little disposable wooden chopsticks just about everytime you buy food from 7/11 (or any other convenience store). I think they even gave me one when I bought a breakfast burrito (which was oddly named, "Italian Burrito!")

[eric&gen 0]

What are they doing shoving the chopsticks up there butts lol. We need to ban all goods coming from China cant trust them anymore lol.

Edited August 23, 2007 by evdogg412