The New York Times wades into the US-China trade dispute over tainted seafood with a report from an eel factory in Guangzhou’s Taishan region. For those who’ve missed the story so far, the FDA recently banned certain Chinese seafood imports on account of high levels of carcinogens and antibiotics:
Here in the Pearl River Delta area, near Hong Kong, it is not hard to see why. Rivers, lakes and coastal waterways are so fouled with industrial chemicals or farm effluents that many seafood exporters are forced to rely on antibiotic drugs to keep their fish alive.
At the Xulong factory here, officials offered a tour of what they said was an up-to-date plant that forces workers to disinfect themselves by going through multiple washing stations. The officials showed off on-site testing labs and boasted that pure water from a local reservoir made their eel the best in China. [Full Text]