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Monday, June 4, 2007

What can dog food and apple juice have in common?

Just as my 3 year old was telling me with glee how he has learned to pour apple juice at pre-school, we read this in the WSJ that the US is the largest market for apple juice imported from China...where the regulations about what pesticides and how much are even more lax than here. One of the most heavily-polluted, pesticide-using country in the world is providing the juice our kids are drinking in a concentrated form!

I'm working with the school to serve organic-only juice. "Who's Monitoring Chinese Food Exports" WSJ, (4/9/2007) "China has one of the world's highest rates of chemical fertilizer use per hectare, and Chinese farmers use many highly toxic pesticides, including some that are banned in the United States," according to a report published last November by the economic-research service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture."

1 comment:

Kathryn said...

I read in the NYT yesterday that China is responding to the recent negative publicity by creating more oversight and stricter controls. Implementation, however, is still years off.