In China, fear of rubber eggs and poisonous poultry prompt Olympian athletes to raise their own chickens

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast menu: Rubber eggs, recycled buns, fresh squeezed orange juice with arsenic, clenbuterol flavored bacon, milk fortified with melamine.

For lunch the menu takes a decidedly twisted turn: Hamburgers made with a 1/4 pound of beef laced with Borax and nitrite fried in gutter oil, mushrooms seasoned with Clorox, slices of juicy red tomato injected with hormones, pickles preserved in formaldehyde, special soy sauce made from hair on a recycled sesame seed bun. You can wash it all down with a refreshing cup of tainted tea and top it off with a nerve-wracking serving of exploding watermelon.

For dinner it’s savory chicken cooked in dog fat, synthetic pig intestine with spicy artificial “meat” filling, served with a side of cadmium laced rice polished with paraffin, on a bed of mushrooms and green beans bleached in Clorox, seasoned soy sauce made from discarded hair waste and sprinkled with a soupcon of industrial waste salts, freshly steamed buns colored with toxic dyes, smothered with fake honey, and served with a wine from the Provence of DDT. For desert, an ice cream sandwich swirled with melamine.

Tomorrow the menu features marinated tofu made of hospital waste plaster and chemical bleach, bean sprouts with urea sprinkled with vinegar made with industrial chemicals, deviled eggs preserved with lead, an ice-cold beverage of pigments and chemical saccharin, fresh synthetic grapes filled with a fruit flavored liquid, topped off with a serving of Jello made with industrial grade gelatin used by the medical industry.

If you have a tummy ache afterwards, there is always a fake Tums to take it away.

A dirty UA will get you the boot

The breakfast of champions in China might just get them busted with a dirty urinalysis. What are Olympians living in China doing to prevent this problem? They are growing their own food, even raising their own chickens.

On Friday the Shanghai Daily reported that China’s national marathon team is raising their own chickens for food to avoid ingesting banned chemicals commonly found in meat in the country. The athletes, who are training ahead of this summer’s London Olympics in the southwestern province of Yunnan, are also procuring yak meat from local highland herdsman to avoid eating at local restaurants were banned additives are sometimes present in food.

Clenbuterol, banned over a decade ago, crooked farmers continue to feed it to pigs because it helps the animals develop more muscle and less fat and allows them to be sold for slaughter more quickly. Trouble is, besides causing heart palpitations and other health problems, is also considered a performance-enhancing drug and is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Olympic chicken farmers

It’s not difficult understand why the athletes would take such drastic measures. One just has to take a brief glance at the headlines to know that the athletes are taking no chances with their health, yet American companies that do business in China are doing just that. In a climate of systemic corruption where the degradation of the value all life forms, American company’s reassurance that all is well seems an absurdity in a country that chooses to ignore the most basic of human and animal rights.

The poultry industry in China, which is causing many in the US with pets increasing concern following the dramatic increase of chicken jerky food poisoning cases in dogs, has come under particular scrutiny in recent months.

It is common practice in the poultry industry globally in order to speed up sales of chicken and ducks, use vast quantities of hormones, steroid and antibiotic in the feed. The antibiotic is used primarily to prevent disease, whereas hormones and steroids enable the chicken and ducks to grow rapidly. The substances in the feed remain in the poultry and eggs, and naturally continue to perform in much the same manner when ingested by humans or animals. Despite this knowledge, it is believed that some other toxin, own not commonly seen in food adulteration, that is causing the acute renal failure and death in dogs shortly after eating, what is sometimes only very small amount, of the dried chicken jerky product.

That’s just nasty

“All of these nasty cases of food-safety problems are enough to show that lack of integrity and moral decline have become a very serious problem,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told government officials in mid-April, according to The People’s Daily. Despite government efforts to clean up their act and create a modern food safety culture, the situation remains utterly haphazard. World Health Organization food safety expert Dr. Peter Ben Embarek warns, “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,” he told the New York Times in May of last year.

The Easter Bunny from Hell

A cruise through the net for fake egg recipes on Chinese language news sites you won’t find the ones for health conscious consumers who want to whip up a cholesterol-free batch of egg substitute, but you will find are the ones for criminals who want to whip up batches of counterfeit egg knockoffs. Unless you’re thinking of committing culinary suicide – just know that consuming fake eggs can cause dementia and memory loss, “Many of the ingredients involved in the manufacture of man-made eggs come in industrial and commercial forms. Considering the extremely low-cost price of man-made eggs, it is uncertain what form of these additives the manufacturers are using. Research has shown that long-term consumption of man-made eggs can lead to memory-loss and dementia.” What research? It sounds like an episode straight out of Testees.

One helpful Chinese website has a fake egg identification guide for consumers in which they caution, “in order to tell the difference between man-made and natural eggs, the first method is to inspect the shell. Man-made eggshells are particularly shiny and if the egg is opened, the egg white is not as sticky as a natural egg and is easily mixed in with the egg yolk. There may also be a light chemical smell coming from the egg yolk/white, whereas natural eggs have a fresh smell.” Um, yeah. The small of chemicals is generally a pretty good tip-off.

According to a report in the New York Times recently, “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”.

After complaints surfaces of reports surfaced “poor quality” man-made rubber eggs (as opposed to high-quality man-made eggs?) in China last week, authorities assured residents that “locally sold eggs” are safe for public consumption, announcing the completion of a round of inspections on 43 batches of randomly selected eggs on the market.

Puzzled shoppers in China complained weeks ago that they had purchased eggs with “rubber yolks” – after a similar situation was discovered in Jinan of Shandong Province late last year. The man-made eggs had a pungent chemical smell and contained yolk with enough elasticity to frighten any unsuspecting diner struggling with his poached egg. Children and dogs were delighted to discover the eggs remarkable rubbery quality enabled the eggs to bounce back some 30 centimeters when dropped from a height of 1 meter, an investigation revealed.

Tastes almost like real meat!

During a show-and-tell of fake food confiscated by Chinese officials recently, Gao Feng, vice-minister of the Economic Investigation Department of the Ministry of Public Security summarized, “fake products are everywhere, coming into our life, covering everything and in every sphere in China. The levels of counterfeiting skills are becoming more and more sophisticated; some fakes were very difficult to differentiate from the real items.” He elaborated, “fake mutton was made, using chicken and pork meat soaked in goat urine. The taste was almost the same as real mutton!”.

The fake food exhibit included “trench oil” (aka gutter oil), a vile carcinogenic concoction loaded with contaminants which is collected from trenches and “reprocessed”, steamed buns colored with toxic coloring substances, and black ink bean noodles. Fake medicines exhibited included flu medicines and antibiotics. Even metal powder was added to medicines to increase their weight.

I am reminded of the reports of chickens being force-fed a heavy earth to increase their weight before bringing them to market in China and sheep being force-fed gallons of water with a hose until their bladders sometimes burst for the same reason.

In April 2011 Prime Minister Wen Jiabao sadly said, “the poisonous foods revealed that the moral standard in China has slid dramatically downhill.”