Corruption deepens in Communist Chinese food chain

• Yankees president Randy Levine in China promising money and Yankee personnel to the Communist Chinese, 1/31/07, photo China Daily

"Chinese regulators are widening their investigation into contaminated food amid growing signs that the toxic industrial chemical melamine has leached into the nation's animal feed supplies, posing health risks to consumers.... China is also one of the world's largest exporters of food and food ingredients, including meats, seafood, beverages

• and vitamins.

Melamine was banned as an animal feed additive in China in July 2007. And last year, United States regulators put tough restrictions on the amount of melamine allowed in food products.

But interviews on Friday, and over the past year, with several Chinese chemical dealers who sell melamine suggests that

• melamine scrap, the substantially cheaper waste left over after producing melamine,

• continued to be added to animal and fish feed.

"I heard some melamine dealers still sell to animal feed producers," said Qin Huaizhen, manager at the Gaocheng Kaishun Chemical Co. in city of Shijiazhuang,

• though he insisted he has never sold melamine to animal feed producers. "In Shandong province many animal feed manufacturers buy melamine scrap."

Two other melamine dealers in east and south China said that

• only after the recent dairy scandal did government regulators begin to closely monitor the sale of melamine to animal feed producers....

Some food-safety experts are perplexed as to how melamine was allowed to seep into China's food supplies after melamine-tainted animal feed exports from China were blamed last year

• for sickening dogs and cats in the United States,

• touching off international trade and food safety disputes between the two countries."...

No baseball player should be forced to travel to or play in Communist China for obvious reasons. (sm)

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