Sizzles From the Gutter

All those food safety scandals that made China hit the news lately also made her an exporter of dangerous foods into the Philippines. And health-conscious people must be more vigilant with foods coming from that country. Say, think about it a lot of times.

IN RECENT years, China has been plagued with an array of food safety scandals—toxic infant formula, pesticide-tainted vegetables, exploding watermelons, lean meat powder and pork reconstituted as beef. Lately, the issue has been about gutter oil—used cooking oil scooped out of restaurant drains.

Vomiting from the grossness of it is the least of the dangers it can bring.

It may not be accidental that the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences noticed the high liver cancer rates in China and in nearby parts of Asia.

Waste oil can be contaminated with fungi that produce aflatoxin, a biological poison that increases the risk of liver cancer. And around September last year, the Chinese government had started a crackdown on syndicates that resell gutter oil to consumers.

Aflatoxins were first derived from the fungus Aspergillus flavus. And to date it is among the most carcinogenic substances known to mankind. The United States Food and Drug Administration set the acceptable level of aflatoxin in all food for human consumption at 20 parts per billion. And no animal species is immune to the extreme ill effects of this toxin. Even highly tolerant adult humans can succumb to acute aflatoxicosis (aflatoxin poisoning).

Children are particularly susceptible. Long-term exposure to aflatoxin in food, even at low levels, can result in... [READ MORE]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 8 August 2012.

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