Despite efforts to create a modern food-safety regimen in China, oversight remains utterly haphazard, in the hands of ill-trained, ill-equipped and outnumbered enforcers whose quick fixes are even more quickly undone.

So says the New York Times in Sunday’s edition.

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a food safety expert with the World Health Organization’s Beijing office, who’s usually blunt, said, “Most of them are working like headless chickens, having no clue what are the major food-borne diseases that need to be addressed or what are the major contaminants in the food process.”

In recent weeks, China’s news media have reported sales of pork adulterated with the drug clenbuterol, which can cause heart palpitations; pork sold as beef after it was soaked in borax, a detergent additive; rice contaminated with cadmium, a heavy metal discharged by smelters; arsenic-laced soy sauce; popcorn and mushrooms treated with fluorescent bleach; bean sprouts tainted with an animal antibiotic; and wine diluted with sugared water and chemicals.

Even eggs, seemingly sacrosanct in their shells, have turned out not to be eggs at all but man-made concoctions of chemicals, gelatin and paraffin. Instructions can be purchased online, the Chinese media reported.

Scandals are proliferating, in part, because producers operate in a cutthroat environment in which illegal additives are everywhere and cost-effective.

Manufacturers calculate correctly that the odds of profiting from unsafe practices far exceed the odds of getting caught, experts say. China’s explosive growth has spawned nearly half a million food producers, the authorities say, and four-fifths of them employ 10 or fewer workers, making oversight difficult.

The producers of Bravo's Top Chef have me pegged as their target audience. Tonight's episode featured the Sesame Street characters Telly, Cookie Monster, and Elmo (who were hilarious judges), and new ads for Target featuring former Top Chef cheftestants and Padma. It's an entertaining episode that left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Tonight's challenge was to cook a meal for 100 employees in a closed Target super store in the middle of the night. Because of the improvised cooking setting, the chefs were forced to set up their kitchens, find their ingredients, and prepare to serve the employees and judges within a 3 hour time limit. Some concentrated on table linens, some on flavors, but there was a frightening absence of handwashing. Granted, many of the chefs opted to make soup, which in theory should allow for thorough cooking of all ingredients. But what about any fancy garnish and fresh salad that ends up on the plate?

My favorite of the season, Richard Blais, made a pork tenderloin (pictured right exactly as shown). He then topped his finished pork with some freshly sliced apple and green chili slaw before serving. His concern? "It's not the prettiest dish in the world. I know that. But I'm ready to defend my dish if I have to. I think it's tasty."

Anthony Bourdain confirmed, "Frankly, I think Richard's disk was butt ugly, but it was delicious."

One day I hope a chef will stand up and protest the cooking conditions or demand a meat thermometer. I will leave the food safety assessment to the experts, but I spotted a few potential concerns:

- using all cooking utensils and dishes straight from boxes with no chance to sanitize them

- improvised utensils, linens, garbage cans, etc.

- no handwashing stations, sanitizing solutions or rags to clean work surfaces or dishes.

I have hit pause on the DVR so many times that I'm not even done watching this episode yet, but I hope it does not end with a foodborne outbreak.

Reuters reported yesterday that new information from the World Health Organization suggested pigs sickened with H1N1 swine flu should not be consumed, despite earlier insistence that fully cooked pork is perfectly safe.

The story states,

"The WHO comments appear more cautious than those from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), which said import bans are not required to safeguard public health because the disease is not food-borne and has not been identified in dead animal tissue.

The WHO however said it was possible for flu viruses to survive the freezing process and be present in thawed meat, as well as in blood."

Well, who in their right mind drinks raw pig blood thinking it won't possibly make them sick?

I didn't find any statements on the WHO website that mentioned the ability of viruses to survive freezing--or its pertinence to the consumption of fully cooked pork--but I discovered that the WHO, FAO, and OIE have reissued their joint statement from April 30 today to address misunderstanding of the consumption of meat from H1N1 infected pigs. The statement reads, in part,

"Authorities and consumers should ensure that meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead are not processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances."

Sick or dead animals should never be slaughtered, regardless of the cause of illness or death. This  reduces the risk for cross-contamination. The statement reassures,

"Heat treatments commonly used in cooking meat (e.g. 70°C/160°F core temperature) will readily inactivate any viruses potentially present in raw meat products.

Pork and pork products, handled in accordance with good hygienic practices recommended by the WHO, Codex Alimentarius Commission and the OIE, will not be a source of infection."

But I shouldn't be spelling this stuff out--the WHO should. And they should address the bit about viruses surviving freezing and how that impacts food handlers.

Authorities should communicate the risks and how they're being managed (or can be managed) in a way the public can understand and the media can't mess up. It's their responsibility to a concerned public.

Someone finally found the H1N1 swine flu in pigs.

After I bashed them for allotting resources for hog surveillance when little evidence for such a need existed, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization is now applauding Canada for spotting the flu in a herd of Alberta swine.

However, a person—not other swine—sickened the pigs.

healthzone.ca reports that a carpenter at an Alberta hog farm went to work on April 14 after a visit to Mexico and may have brought the H1N1 flu with him. Within a couple weeks, about a tenth of the 2,200-hog operation showed signs of the flu.

The affected hogs were quarantined and all are recovering or have already recovered. Only one other person who has had contact with the pigs shares signs of illness.

Across Canada, however, canada.com reports that another 15 cases of H1N1 flu were confirmed last week, bringing the country’s total to 34. One case was a student at Beairsto Elementary School, which responded by closing for a week.

Additionally, the story reports,

“The federal government will launch a public awareness campaign Friday to inform Canadians about the swine flu as the number of cases in Canada climbed to 34 and the number of worldwide cases surpassed 270.”

I hope these messages for the public contain more information than “you can’t get the flu from food,” which is about all I’ve heard so far.

In a press release in the US, the director of science and technology for the National Pork Producers Council, Dr. Jennifer Greiner, was quoted as saying,

"People cannot get the flu from eating or handling pork. The flu is a respiratory illness, it's not a food-borne illness."

Then can someone please explain to their country how to manage these respiratory risks?

Let’s talk more about what the risks are than what they aren’t.