What warnings does the plasticizer scandal bring beyond food safety?

Text / Wu Dongjie Images / lanchiachi1977

Germany's E. coli contamination, Taiwan's plasticizers and arsenic in American chicken all filled the media pages, becoming a focus of public attention for a time. These three incidents present different problems.

The German E. coli contamination first pointed to Spanish cucumbers, but it was later confirmed to be contaminated bean sprouts from Germany.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that roxarsone, added to chicken feed, may remain in the chickens' bodies. Roxarsone is an antibiotic that has disease-resistant and growth-promoting effects, is produced by Pfizer, and has been used for more than sixty years.

Why, after being used for so long, was its problem only discovered now?

Instrument precision brings a sixty-year-old problem to light

One explanation is that today's instruments are more sensitive, having moved from PPM to PPB - that is, the allowable dosage unit used to be calculated in parts per million, but now it is as fine as parts per billion. This finer measurement has gone from the contamination amount of a five-yuan coin dripped into a bathtub improving to being detectable even when dropped into a 50-meter swimming pool. As instruments become more sensitive, the requirements have also become more detailed.

Regarding the arsenic in American chicken, Taiwan's agricultural authorities said that 40 percent of chicken farms in Taiwan also use the antibiotic roxarsone. They also explained that, apart from the European Union banning roxarsone, the United States, China and Latin America all use it. This means Taiwan's policy is to follow countries such as the United States rather than the EU standard.

Although the European Union is accustomed to strict standards, when the E. coli contamination occurred it still could not immediately identify the source at the time, and it even triggered protests from Spain, because Spanish agriculture suffered huge losses as a result. For Spain, which was trapped in difficulties with both unemployment and its finances, this only made matters worse.

Regarding the German E. coli contamination, a column in Britain's Guardian pointed out that in 1996 Lanarkshire in Britain also had an E. coli contamination, in which 21 people died, but the source was found quickly and precisely because the contamination source was a local meat stall. Why was this German contamination so slow to be confirmed? Because food sources are too diverse and varied. The column stated even more clearly that E. coli contamination is caused by industrialization and globalization, and Russia even announced a ban on the import of EU fruits and vegetables.

Globalization and industrialization are the hidden hand behind food contamination. They not only caused Germany's E. coli contamination, but arsenic in chicken and even Taiwan's plasticizers could hardly escape contamination by this hidden hand.

Why are plasticizer additives needed?

Plasticizers are not food additives, but why are they in food? This is like how melamine should not appear in milk powder, yet it appeared.

Modern people need things to be simple, cheap and fast, which is precisely the greatest function and benefit of food additives. Taiwan's food plasticizer incident was almost a real-life version of the book "The Terrifying Food Additives" by Japanese food additive expert Abe Tsukasa, and through this plasticizer incident everyone came to understand what "food additives" are.

But can food safety issues really be simplified into a problem of additives?

Of course not. Additives are also absolutely not limited to the clouding agents that plasticizers replaced. Even what a "clouding agent" is - I believe that on first seeing this term, one would certainly be as bewildered as if riding the clouds and fog.

To put it plainly, a "clouding agent" is a term used for "combined labeling" in food labels. In the book "The Terrifying Food Additives", there is a section devoted to discussing the problem of "combined labeling", and the title of this section is even more worth pondering: What conspiracy is underway "behind" "combined labeling"?

Because manufacturers benefit from "combined labeling", they write multiple additives with similar functions together, such as "flavorings" and "emulsifiers", without having to write clearly and explain plainly exactly which flavorings were used and what the dosage of each flavoring was. So juice does not need real fruit to produce the aroma and color of juice.

This plasticizer scandal certainly also answered many people's doubts: why could a factory where fruit was never seen ship out juice every day? And "fruit paste" is not "jam" either; it turned out to be a kind of "clouding agent", and even food experts were fooled. What is frightening is that enterprises actually added industrial-use plasticizers to food and beverages; and even more absurd is that even national-level GMP plants and the state-owned enterprise Taiwan Sugar, as well as well-known brands such as Uni-President, were hit. In addition to beverages and juices, even health products and pharmaceuticals contained plasticizers.

High levels of DEPH in the Xiuguluan River

We not only eat many products containing plasticizers; plastic products around us in daily life are even more numerous. Scholars even conducted sampling of riverbed sediment and fish bodies in 2010 targeting 11 rivers - the Tamsui River, Dahan River, Xindian River, Touqian River, Dajia River, Beigang River, Xiuguluan River, Keelung River, Keya River, Puzi River and Jiangjun River. The test results found that the DEPH among the plasticizers contained in fish bodies from the Xiuguluan River in Hualien was the highest among fish bodies from the 11 rivers.

DEPH is an environmental hormone that can feminize males, and more importantly it can affect reproductive function, and in severe cases can even cause an entire biological population to disappear. Moreover, its latent period can reach one or two decades, and symptoms may even appear only in the next generation.

Why would fish bodies in the Xiuguluan River contain DEPH? Is Hualien not known for its fine mountains and waters? And in this survey it was also found that the DEPH contained in the sediment of the middle and lower reaches of the river section was also higher than in the upper reaches.

The cause lies in pesticides and domestic wastewater. When it comes to pesticides containing DEPH, there is generally little doubt, while domestic wastewater contains DEPH from soap and laundry detergent. In addition, plastic bags release DEPH when heated. According to Taiwanese people's living habits, DEPH is scattered in every corner.

"Food education" needs further improvement

If we understand the characteristics of environmental hormone substances, we will not doubt why fish bodies in Hualien's Xiuguluan River contain DEPH, because scientists have also found dioxins in polar bears. Where do the dioxins in polar bears come from? Of course, from the polar bear's food chain. Just like PCBs in organisms in Lake Ontario, along the biological food chain, as big fish eat small fish and time accumulates, organisms at the higher end of the food chain contain higher concentrations.

Facing globalized and industrialized food and food production, as well as large amounts of chemical products, safe and healthy food not only requires good government governance; social education on food safety and the production environment is also relatively important. In addition, consumers must look out for themselves and understand the food they eat with even more care than producers do - this is the so-called "food education".

Plasticizers could lie latent in Taiwan for thirty years, and it is believed that other things are also still lying latent on this Earth. DDT was once a great invention of the 1940s and won the Nobel Prize in 1948, yet thirty years later, in 1972, it was banned.

Facing these great inventions, or the blindness of experts, we still have many debates underway, such as over genetically modified crops.

Facing these hidden and unseen risks, our "food education" needs further improvement. From government to enterprises and even consumers, it is necessary to improve the attitudes toward food held in the past. The public cannot continue to be indifferent to the food they eat every day, otherwise the health that is ultimately harmed will still be their own. Only once there is a sense of crisis can the government be pushed to establish stricter food control regulations.