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| Nice and Safe? |
A friend from Australia today sent me an E-Mail warning that Australia was importing food from unregulated sources. He specifically mentioned China, Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand as they grow vegetables using chemicals that are banned elsewhere. They then export these vegetables to countries like Canada and Australia who package them and label them produced in the packaging country.
They must however, include the country of origin on the bar code. I did not know this but the first three numbers in the bar code indicates the country of origin. For example 50 is the UK and 93 is Australia. The ones to watch out for are 690-695 China, 471 Taiwan, 489 Hong Kong and 885 Thailand.
I immediately went through our larder and found 50 on almost everything until I came to olive oil which began 80. It is hardly a surprise that Italy uses the number 80. I think that we should all be more aware of the source of our food so if you are interested in a full list of bar code country numbers you can find then here.
Don't get me wrong horse meat for me is not an issue. For years in Germany we ate Frikadella which we were told was horse meat but it was a late night delicacy after a night on the booze. Frankly we didn't care and it was nice.
So I don't particularly object to horse meat in the food chain. I just want to be informed what I am eating. Already Tesco's have admitted some of their burgers have contained horse meat. Now although I am not offended by this I object to this duplicity.
Today we now hear that some of the giant Findus companys' products which they labelled 'Beef Lasagne' were in fact horse meat! Now that is fraud. As I have said I don't object to horse meat but what else is Findus and Tesco including in their products. We now know about horse meat but what do we not know about?
Can we trust these producers of mass meat products. Clearly not ... so it is back to the local butcher for me. At least they know that if they sell dodgy products they would be out of business. The multinationals clearly do not care. The multinational mass producers are now being proven to be dangerous. They have driven cost cutting to an art even to the point of deception. Who could be the first person to be poisoned by a supermarket?
I now want to know what our useless politicians will do about it?
