‘Organic’ from China exposed: The Shocking Truth about ‘organic’ foods Grown in the World’s worst environmental cesspool

 

By Mike Adams

When it comes to foods, superfoods and even nutritional supplements from China, "organic" is largely a hoax. This is my opinion, of course, but I've been researching the issue quite extensively as the key decision maker for new products in the Natural News Store. And I've come to the conclusion that "organic" from China is largely a fraud. Here's why...

First off, you're going to be shocked to learn that there is no limit to how much mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic and aluminum is allowed in "organic" products.

It's a fact: USDA organic standards place NO LIMITS on levels of heavy metals contamination of certified organic foods. Even further, there is no limit on the contamination of PCBs, BPA and other synthetic chemicals that's allowed in certified organic foods, superfoods and supplements.

At this point, you're probably shaking your head in disbelief and thinking, "No, that can't be true. Organic standards must check for heavy metals and chemical contamination, right?"

No! "Organic" certifies a process of how food is grown or produced. It certifies that the farmer doesn't  add pesticides, herbicides, petroleum-based fertilizer, metals or synthetic chemicals to the crop (among other things), and it certifies that the soil must be free from such things for a certain number of years before organic certification is approved.

But organic certification does nothing to address environmental sources of pollution such as chemtrails, contaminated irrigation water, and fallout from industrial or chemical factories that might be nearby. A certified organic farmer can use polluted water on their crops and still have the crops labeled "organic."

For this reason: the environment in which organic foods are produced is critical to the cleanliness of the final product.

Organic farming in a clean environment produces clean, organic foods. But organic farming in a polluted environment produces contaminated organic foods. And China is one of the most polluted chemical cesspools on the planet. The pictures on the right show some scenes from China, a country suffocating under a pollution nightmare.

As you view these pictures, ask yourself: Would you eat food grown there? Even if it were sold by Whole Foods and labeled "organic?"

China is an environmental nightmare

China is a nation that has virtually no environmental regulation enforcement. In China, anything goes: You can dump mercury into rivers. You can spray raw human sewage sludge on crops. You can produce factory-made chemicals and blow the waste products right into the air through smokestacks. In China, many rivers are so toxic that, from time to time, they actually catch on fire and burn.

It's so bad that a Chinese environmental official was recently offered over US$30,000 to take a 20-minute swim in a local river.

He DECLINED. Why? Because the river there is so polluted that swimming in it would mean certain death.

It is this water that's often used in "organic" food and superfood production in China. So even though the farmer is following organic process standards, he may be using irrigation water that's wildly contaminated with metals, chemicals and even pesticide residues. He may be spraying hormone drugs on the crops because there's a pharmaceutical factory upstream.

Here's the kicker: In a country with virtually no environmental laws, "organic" food production is largely a fraud because environmental sources contaminate the foods or super-foods being produced there.

There are some exceptions to this, by the way. Notably goji berries are grown at high altitude, far away from the pollution of China's cities and rivers. Goji berries sourced from China tend to be very clean and have very low levels of contamination. There are no doubt other exceptions to the rule, but the difficulty is in knowing what to trust that comes out of China.

In North America, "organic" is legitimate precisely because North America has far more strict environmental standards. Organic is clean food, responsibly produced, and consistently less contaminated than conventional food. The same is true across Europe, where organic standards are also strict. But in China, "organic" is often a joke. Almost a hoax, in my opinion.

And the laboratory tests bear this out. For example, we just published an investigative story on chlorella showing that "organic" chlorella from China is polluted with nearly ten times the aluminum level of "organic" chlorella from Taiwan. And the cleanest chlorella we found in terms of metals contamination was actually a non-organic chlorella produced in Korea.

China is a nation that lacks ethics

Remember, too, that China is a communist regime. It is a country where all religion has been outlawed and the people are never taught ethics or morality. They have no moral compass. Across China, the majority of the population believes that the best way to get ahead is to CHEAT, lie and steal, even if it means harming someone else in the process.

Remember: China is the country where they put melamine in infant formula, knowing that it will kill little children. China is the country where the paint on children's toys contains obscene levels of brain-damaging lead. China is a nation of shortcut-takers who will do anything  to cheapen a product as long as they can cover it up and trick the buyer. This is why "made in China" has, for decades, been synonymous with "crap quality."

Here's a little note that will interest pet owners: If you buy pet treats made in China, you are murdering your pet with the most insane chemicals imaginable. The stuff that goes into some pet treats made in China is highly toxic and causes cancer. This is one of the main factors behind the alarming rise of cancers among dogs and cats in North America.

All this isn't just secondhand information, by the way: I lived in Asia for two years and traveled extensively throughout the region. I speak a fair amount of Mandarin (Chinese), and I've interacted with lots and lots of people from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. I can tell you that Taiwan is a country with much greater honesty, integrity and quality than China. In Taiwan, religion is allowed and openly practiced (Buddhism, mostly). In Taiwan, there is a sense of responsibility to customers. There is a philosophy of striving for quality. Taiwan is to China like revolutionary America was to the British Empire. Taiwan is a island nation of hard-working, creative, innovative entrepreneurs, and when I look to import products from Asia, I always try to find it in Taiwan first because I know Taiwan means quality.

But in China, it's exactly the opposite: There is no sense of responsibility to customers. The overriding philosophy is to screw the customer,  even on the very first order, knowing that the customer will never buy from you again! In China, the idea is to CHEAT people rather than make them happy. You see this all the way to the top of the government which is, of course, a police state communist regime where laws are enforced at gunpoint against a completely disarmed and helpless population that has no rights. China is a culture of corruption, deception and exploitation.

Now, of course, there are people in China who rebel against all this. There are exceptions to the rule, and there may even be some honest organic food producers in China that buck the trend. Not all mainland Chinese are bad people. Many wish to overthrow the corrupt government and restore freedom, liberty and justice to the country. But because they are all disarmed (China has no Bill of Rights), they are powerless against a dictatorial government. They are slaves to the system.

Health Ranger Select brand BANS all foods, superfoods and ingredients from China except for goji berries

I made a decision months ago to ban anything produced in China from my own label, with the exception being goji berries. If a food, superfood or supplement has my name on it, I will not use ingredients sourced from China unless I know and can VERIFY the end-product cleanliness of the product.

So if you see the "Health Ranger Select" brand or the "Storable Organics" brand, know that it's clean and very carefully sourced.

We source from the USA, Canada, European countries, Peru and even Thailand for some ingredients. Mexico is acceptable for some ingredients as well. But China is a big red flag. I simply can't trust that most foods, superfoods or supplements from China are going to be consistently clean and honest.

China is the kind of country where you order a sample of a raw material -- say pomegranate juice powder -- and the first batch you receive is really clean and passes all the lab tests. So you order 5000kg of the stuff, and when it arrives, it's all full of lead and pesticides.

Chinese medicine herbs from China are notoriously contaminated with lead. The same is true for green tea and many other ingredients that naturally absorb heavy metals.

All sorts of products at Whole Foods, by the way, are grown in China but certified "organic." What a joke. Given that China has virtually no environmental enforcement whatsoever , the very idea that something grown in China can be certified "organic" is absurd. Without a clean environment, you can't product clean food even if you follow organic growing standards.

So why do so many formulators and food companies in the USA still buy ingredients from China? Because they're CHEAP.

Buying from China means higher profit

Here's the dirty little secret of the natural products industry... and yes, the "dirty" is quite literal in this case: Raw materials from China are cheap! Across the board, raw materials (foods, superfoods, supplements) from China are about 1/4th the cost of materials grown in North America or Europe.

This means getting your ingredients from China grants your product a lot more profit in the marketplace. For those selling through Whole Foods -- whose product shelves are littered with ingredients made in China -- this profit margin is essential to economic survival.

If you're buying a superfood powder sold at Whole Foods and paying $50 at retail, the actual ingredient cost that goes into that superfood canister is often as little as $5. So sourcing those materials from China is crucial to having the margins. Whole Foods might only pay your company $22 or so for a product they sell at $50. So your company has to buy the materials, pay for shipping, insurance, labor, packaging, formulations and everything else and still somehow make a profit to stay in business. So you source from China. You make a really nice-looking label, you get it "certified organic" with a nice USDA logo on it, and you sell it to Whole Foods which adds another layer of legitimacy to the product.

But inside the bottle, there could be mercury hiding in there. Or pharmaceutical residues. Or pesticide residues. Or just about anything, including melamine.

Now, obviously Whole Foods has a level of quality control in place, and they do require C of A's for products they carry. But China is expert at FAKING these documents and tricking importers, formulators and manufacturers.

In China, the idea of forging a laboratory analysis document is no big deal. Fabricating fake documents is routine. You have to understand the philosophy of these people living without any code of ethics, surviving under a police state communist regime: There are no ethics. No values. No moral compass. Forging a fake lab report is no different to them than planting seeds: it's just one more step needed to make money. There is no moral difference in their minds between telling the truth and lying. It's a "relativistic" morality philosophy.

I'm not saying all people in China are liars and deceivers. But a lot of them are. Anyone who has actually lived there for any length of time knows exactly what I'm talking about. This is a country where deceptive manufacturers take white sesame seeds and coat them in toxic black ink just to sell them as "black sesame seeds." This is a country where infant formula producers spike their formula with kidney-destroying melamine in order to make an extra five cents a pound, even while killing babies by the thousands. THEY DON'T CARE. China is a nation that has abandoned morality and even attacked it. This is a country where the Falun Gong group of meditation advocates and yoga practitioners is arrested and thrown in prison by an extremely oppressive, dictatorial government.

Look, cultures are different everywhere around the world. You want to hang out with really nice, intelligent and honest people? Get yourself some Dutch friends. They're the most upstanding, moral, educated bunch of folks you'll ever meet.

You want to hang out with highly-innovative rule followers? Get yourself some German friends. They follow the rules. And they're smart, innovative people on top of that. Brilliant minds. Some of the greatest scientists in history came out of Berlin.

You want some friends who are wildly creative? Those are Americans. Americans make the best movies, the best music (well, along with UK musicians anyway), and a lot of the best computer software on the planet. Americans are rebels. They break the rules and forge a new path. America is a nation founded on rebellion.

But if you're looking for people who will stab you in the back in a business deal, go the China. There, you will find the most back-stabbing, dishonest cheaters and liars you'll probably ever meet, short of Nigera's "Prince Nubula" whose emails promise you'll receive a million dollars if you only send them $5,000 first.

Why you won't hear this truth anywhere else

I know that telling the truth is unpopular and not politically correct. I'm not interested in winning a popularity contest. What I'm doing here is flat-out telling the truth that most other people are too afraid to say on their own: The very idea of "organic" coming out of China is a disturbing contradiction.

And organic standards have a huge gap in the fact that they don't require foods to actually be free from mercury or other contaminants. Overall, organic is a wonderful standard and I've been a strong advocate of organic, but when a "USDA organic" label is slapped on a product grown in China, you really have to scratch your head and say, "Yeah, it might be organic, but is it clean?"

It may be, but you just don't know until you test it. "Organic" grown in the USA can be  assumed  to be clean, but organic grown in China must be assumed contaminated unless proven otherwise.

Until China enforces some really strict environmental standards, "organic" from China is largely a fraud in my opinion. It's a hoax. You can lie to yourself and say, "Well it's ORGANIC so it must be clean!" but you'll be swallowing mercury, lead, pesticides and other synthetic chemicals in various amounts.

Laboratory tests confirm everything I'm telling you here. This is the dirty little secret of the organic food industry that nobody's talking about.

China's environmental nightmare

Just how polluted is China's environment? As I mentioned above, it's so bad that a Chinese environmental official was recently offered over US$30,000 to take a 20-minute swim in a local river. He declined the offer, as would any sane person.

Are these the same rivers that are being used to produce "organic" crops in China? You have to wonder. A river can be so inundated with smelting factory runoff and chemical pollution that even bacteria struggle to survive in it; yet this water can be legally sprayed on crops that are exported to America as "organic."

If you buy "organic" foods, superfoods or supplements grown in China, you need to know about this.

As The Guardian reports:
A recent government study found that groundwater in 90% of China's cities is contaminated, most of it severely. The head of China's ministry of water resources said last year that up to 40% of the country's rivers are "seriously polluted", and an official report from last summer found that up to 200 million rural Chinese have no access to clean drinking water.

By the way, this is another story altogether, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that China is headed for an environmental collapse. The country has polluted itself far beyond the point of long-term sustainable life. Children are being born as mutants. Rivers support no fish life. Soils are building up obscene levels of contaminants and becoming so toxic that crop yields are affected. Cities are so filled with airborne pollution that the mere act of breathing  causes cancer. And on top of that, China's one-child policy has resulted in mass gendercide where baby girls are routinely -- and yes, I mean ROUTINELY -- murdered, drowned, suffocated, etc., because the family wants a son, not a daughter.

In its quest for economic power, China has poisoned itself to death, and now it's only a matter of time before the nation collapses in a cesspool of toxicity and lies. The economic "boom" of China is nearly over, and it will be followed by an environmental implosion so huge and disgusting that the world will be absolutely horrified. Remember: China is so corrupt that it won't stop factories from openly dumping toxic waste directly into the groundwater supplies. Instead of acknowledging the source of pollution, Chinese officials simply accept bribes and cover it up. The corruption in China is so deeply rooted in the culture that honesty and accountability can never overcome the deception.

With some exceptions, when you buy food grown in China, you are buying food produced in the most toxic environment on planet Earth, grown by some of the most deceptive and most corrupt liars and back-stabbers on the planet, all ruled by one of the most dictatorial and tyrannical governments history has ever known. That about sums it up.

Ultimately, China has a terminal environmental crisis on its hands, compounded by an eternally corrupt, dictatorial communist regime government that oppresses freedom and outlaws religion while forcing families to kill their own baby girls under its population control mandates.

In summary, China suffers from:

• An environmental nightmare
• An almost complete abandonment of morals and integrity
• A deeply corrupt communist police state political system that mandates the mass murder of baby girls

Is this the vibe you really want to be putting into your body?

Source:
www.naturalnews.com

http://worldtruth.tv

10 Secrets of the Vatican Exposed

Vatican City may have fewer than 1,000 citizens and spans only 110 acres, but it also has a multimillion-dollar budget and an unbelievably complex history. Understanding how it all works requires parsing through centuries of religious texts. Is the Vatican confusing and mysterious? Is the pope Catholic? A look behind the scenes:

Regular exorcise!
Baudelaire once said that "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist." But in modern-day Vatican City, the devil is considered alive and well. The late Pope John Paul II personally performed three exorcisms during his reign, and Pope Benedict XVI expanded the ranks of Catholic-sponsored exorcists throughout the world. In fact, Father Gabriele Amorth, the Church's chief exorcist, claims to expel more than 300 demons a year from the confines of his Vatican office, and there are some 350 exorcists operating on behalf of the Catholic Church in Italy alone. Amorth also teaches bishops how to tell the difference between satanic possession and psychiatric illness, noting that those who suffer from the former seem to be particularly repulsed by the sight of holy water and the cross.

Where thieves go to prey
With 1.5 crimes per citizen, Vatican City has the highest crime rate in the world.
It's not that the cardinals are donning masks and repeatedly robbing the bank, it's just that the massive crowds of tourists make Vatican City a pickpocket's paradise. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Vatican has no working prison and only one judge. So most criminals are simply marched across the border into Italy, as part of a pact between the two countries. (The Vatican's legal code is based on Italy's, with some modifications regarding abortion and divorce.) Crimes that the Vatican sees fit to try itself — mainly shoplifting in its duty-free stores — are usually punished by temporarily revoking the troublemaker's access to those areas. But not every crime involves theft. In 2007, the Vatican issued its first drug conviction after an employee was found with a few ounces of cocaine in his desk.

The worst confessions
Some sins are simply too much for a local bishop to forgive. While priests can absolve a sin as serious as murder (according to the Church), there are five specific sins that require absolution from the Apostolic Penitentiary. This secretive tribunal has met off and on for the past 830 years, but in January 2009, for the first time ever, its members held a press conference to discuss their work.
Three of the five sins they contemplate can only be committed by the clergy. If you're a priest who breaks the seal of confession, a priest who offers confession to his own sexual partners, or a man who has directly participated in an abortion and wants to become a priest, then your case must go before the tribunal to receive absolution. The other two sins can be committed by anyone. The first, desecrating the Eucharist, is particularly bad because Catholics believe that the bread and wine transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ. Messing with them is like messing with Jesus. And then, there's the sin of attempting to assassinate the pope. That one's pretty self-explanatory.
The meetings of the Apostolic Penitentiary are kept confidential because they're a different form of confession. The sinner is referred to by a pseudonym, and only the Major Penitentiary, Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro, decides how the sin shall be dealt with. Presumably, a bunch of Hail Marys doesn't cut it.
You can read the Pope's mail
The Vatican's secret archives haven't been truly secret since Pope Leo XIII first allowed scholars to visit in 1881. Today, it's even more accessible. Outsiders are free to examine the correspondences of every pope for the past 1,000 years, although there is one catch: Guests have to know exactly what they're looking for. With 52 miles of shelves in the archives, the librarians prohibit browsing.
The most famous existing letter is probably Henry VIII's request that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon be annulled, which Pope Clement VII denied. Henry divorced Catherine anyway and married Anne Boleyn (and four other women), leading to Rome's break with the Church of England. The archives also contain an abundance of red ribbons, which were used to bind 85 petitions from English clergyman and aristocrats.

The Pope liked to text message
During his tenure, Pope Benedict XVI routinely sent text messages of his homilies to mobile subscribers around the world, and in 2009, the Vatican opened up an official YouTube channel to show various papal addresses and ceremonies. The Vatican even released an iPhone application that contains multilingual versions of the Breviary prayer book and the prayers of daily mass. Most recently, Benedict had joined Twitter in December, two months before his resignation. The Vatican's enthusiasm for technology isn't limited to cell phones and the internet. It has also added solar panels to the roof of the Pope Paul VI auditorium as part of its commitment to fight climate change.

The Vatican has the finest Swiss bodyguards
Nowadays, the Swiss have a reputation for pacifism, but back in the 1500s, they were considered an unstoppable military force. Swiss armies were renowned for the their mastery of a weapon called the halberd, a deadly combination of a spear and an axe, and their ground troops were famous for routinely demolishing legions of enemies on horseback. After Pope Julius II witnessed their ferocity in battle 500 years ago, he recruited a few soldiers to become his personal bodyguards. Ever since, Swiss Guards have pledged fidelity to the pope, sometimes dying for the cause. During the sacking of Rome in 1527, for instance, three quarters of them were killed while providing cover for Pope Clement VII to escape.
Today, the hundred or so members of the Swiss Guard spend most of their time bedecked in Renaissance garb, twirling their halberds in ceremonies or manning checkpoints around the Vatican. When the Guards are actually protecting the pope, they wear plain clothes and carry distinctly modern weapons.

The Mafia dipped into the collection plate
In The Godfather: Part III, a shady deal between the Mafia and the Vatican leads to the murder of the pope. Was this based on a true story? Possibly. On the morning of September 29, 1978, Pope John Paul I was found dead, sitting up in his bed, after only 33 days in office. Although Vatican officials claimed the 65-year-old pope died of a heart attack, there was never an autopsy, and at the time, the Vatican definitely had ties to organized crime. Sure enough, in 1982, Vatican Bank president Father Paul Marcinkus resigned from his post after a series of scandals exposed the bank's ties to the Mafia. Eventually, the bank had to repay more than $200 million to its creditors. But Marcinkus was never indicted of a crime, and though he was suspected of being involved in several mysterious deaths, including Pope John Paul I's, Marcinkus successfully claimed diplomatic immunity in the United States and retired to Arizona in 1990, and died there 16 years later.

There's no vice pope
Once a cardinal becomes the pope, he's the designated leader of the Catholic Church and God's representative on Earth for the rest of his life — which was basically the case until Pope Benedict XVI's surprise resignation last month. (Up until then, it had been more than 500 years since the last papal resignation.) Further, as modern medicine improves, even seriously ill people tend to stick around longer, meaning that a pope could be alive but unable to perform his duties for years, as was the case with John Paul II. What happens then? Well, no one is really sure. A cardinal can take over the pope's responsibilities as the Vatican's head of state, but no one else is allowed to carry out his ceremonial duties. In the end, many masses and benedictions simply go unperformed until the pope either passes away or recovers.

Faith-based economics
The Vatican needs several hundred million dollars per year to operate. Its many financial responsibilities include running international embassies, paying for the pope's travels around the world, maintaining ancient cathedrals, and donating considerable resources to schools, churches, and health care centers. So where does that money come from? Catholics pay tithes to their local parishes and donate about $100 million every year to the Vatican itself. But collection plates aren't the Vatican's only source of money. The city-state also gets cash from books, museums, stamps, and souvenir shops. (Get your limited-edition Vatican euros!)
But that's not always enough. At the end of 2007, the city-state was $13.5 million in the hole. Part of the problem was the weakened American dollar, which translated into less purchasing power. Another contributing factor was the lackluster performance of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. To boost subscriptions, Pope Benedict asked the editor to spice up the layout with more photos and allowed him to cover world news stories in addition to the traditional religious fare.

Even the ATMS are in Latin
The Vatican Bank is the only bank in the world that allows ATM users to select Latin to perform transactions. That's just one symbol of the Holy See's continued devotion to the language. Pope Benedict XVI had been particularly passionate about reviving the language and purportedly held many informal conversations in Latin. (Pope John Paul II generally spoke Polish.)

Source:

theweek.com

worldtruth.tv