20. Toxic Apple Juice
There is something concerning about the apple juice coming in from China and it’s not just the sheer volume but the fact that these apple juice products contain high volumes of arsenic. The arsenic is not the organically occurring arsenic that we see in chocolate or other food products, but the toxic kind of arsenic that shouldn’t be ingested. “The way it is manufactured, they don’t have the same laws and regulatory systems that we do in the U.S. Inherently, yeah, imported food manufactured overseas is probably riskier, ” said Dan Solis, the FDA Director of Import Operations in Los Angeles. Those regulatory systems have recently been looked at by Chinese offices but the findings are rather alarming.
On December 18, 2016, Bi Jingquan, head of The China Food and Drug Administration, spoke to the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress. Jingquan explained that despite the progress made, the food sector still has “deep-seeded” problems. In his report, Jingquan said the food safety department conducted 15 million inspections within the first nine months of 2016, finding 500,000 illegal incidents.
This is a concerning number of incidents and might explain why there are so many harmful and dangerous food products coming out of China. Some maybe even being the most common of household items, like the next dangerous product on this list…