Food Supply Safety: Exploding Melons

This article about exploding melons in China points out another reason to try to grow as much of your own food as possible and to buy the rest from trusted, preferably local sources. In many countries laws governing which chemicals can be used on food crops or even livestock intended for human consumption are very lax. Even if such rules are in place, enforcement is often spotty at best.

In the case of this specific example, farmers in China were adding excessive amounts of forchlorfenuron on their watermelon crops. This chemical is designed to make the fruit grow faster, rapidly expanding its size and weight. For crops sold by the pound, this can mean additional profit for the farmer.

While forchlorfenuron is used in the United Stated for certain fruits such as kiwi and grapes, amounts are regulated. In China, it seems, at least some farmers got the idea that if a little is good, more is better. While much of the fruit so treated has burst and become worthless, thanks in part to the heavy rains that magnified the effect of the chemical causing the melons to grow so quickly that the rinds split open and ruined the crops in the field, different weather conditions could have resulted in a different outcome.

Here are the USDA safety findings for forchlorfenuron.  Studies on animals show that it can result in low body weight, low birth weight, and some significant kidney problems in animals. No comprehensive human tests have been conducted. It's not clear how much of the chemical was being used in China or what concentrations were found int he flesh of the fruit. So there is no way of knowing how the dosage compares to that used in the animal tests.

This, unfortunately, is not the only case of tainted food supplies from China and other sources. Melamine has been found in milk, eggs, baby formula and other food products in China. In one famous case, a supplier was even marketing the toxic by-product of plastic manufacture as a protein content enhancement to food processors. Because a chemical in it mimics one tested for in protein tests, it essentially caused a false positive result in protein testing for foods.

Only a very small percentage of food entering the United States (or even food produced within the United States) is ever tested for these kinds of contaminants. As a consumer, you simply can't know what's in most of the food you eat if you buy food produced in large commercial operations, especially those from regions where the existence or effectiveness regulations and oversight is dubious, at best. If, however, you grow your own food, you are in control of what goes in it. If you buy from local farms, you can often actually visit them as see their operations or at least talk to someone from that farm and ask questions abotu their practices.

Eating local foods, gardening and raisng your own food are not just good for the environment, they can protect you, individually, from the risk of dangerous chemical contaminants that may be added to the food supply without your knowledge or consent.