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  • From poisons

  • to road accidents,

  • a lot of things in China can be deadly.

  • Hi. Welcome to China Uncensored.

  • I'm your host, Chris Chappell.

  • Be sure to subscribe for the latest China news.

  • The world is full of delightful deadly dangers.

  • From natural disasters to disease,

  • from toxic waste to toxic food.

  • And China's certainly got its fair share of things that could kill you...

  • eventually.

  • So today, I bring you five things to look out for in China

  • if you're not yet ready to meet Marx.

  • Karl, not Groucho.

  • Number 5

  • Tainted food.

  • Now, I love Chinese food.

  • Whether it's soup dumplings,

  • or red-cooked pork,

  • or hand-pulled noodles

  • there's no cuisine that tantalizes the taste buds like Chinese food.

  • But when you eat Chinese food in China these days,

  • well, you may be putting yourself at risk.

  • I don't want to be alarmist here

  • you're probably not going to die,

  • but you might wish you were dead.

  • For example, if you're visiting China,

  • you'll definitely want to try the street food.

  • Just think of it like playing Russian roulette

  • with your digestive system.

  • Vendors may not washing things,

  • or maybe they let meat sit around in the open for hours.

  • Sometimes street food can be great.

  • Other times, let's just say it can come back to bite you.

  • And consider that some of the delicious foods

  • that you may be eating might have been prepared

  • using recycled gutter oil.

  • It's all in a day's work for this woman.

  • She opens up a manhole cover and scoops out

  • as much slop as she can.”

  • According that Radio Free Asia report,

  • business is so good,

  • in just a few short years of scooping out gutter gunk,

  • that woman made enough money to build a house.

  • Her slop eventually ends up at a processing plant like this one,

  • where it's combined with other animal fat refuse,

  • to create recycled cooking oil.

  • Workers put the oil in barrels for delivery

  • to restaurants and hotels.”

  • Now that video is from 2013.

  • So have things changed since then?

  • Well, since at least 2010,

  • Chinese authorities have repeatedly cracked down

  • on the use of gutter oil,

  • but there's no sign that it's gone.

  • Especially since authorities have to keep ramping up the crackdown.

  • Now you might think going to a Western restaurant

  • like KFC or McDonald's would be safe

  • since they have higher standards.

  • Well, not necessarily.

  • A video surfaced in Chinese media a few years back,

  • showing disgusting practices in a Shanghai food-processing factory

  • that supplies ingredients to a lot of international restaurant brands.

  • It began with this grainy video shot by local TV,

  • showing workers allegedly processing expired meat.

  • Mixing raw and recycled meat,

  • and pulling raw meat directly off the floor with their bare hands.”

  • The plant supplied meat in several Chinese cities

  • to McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's.

  • Which I didn't even know they had in China.

  • Food scandals in China are disturbingly common.

  • From 'seriously mouldy' meals on Chinese trains...

  • to kindergartens feeding kids 'rotten, worm-infested food'...

  • restaurants and institutions may not be

  • a safe haven of food safety in the least.

  • A quality control and compliance service provider called Qima

  • found that almost half of Chinese food-processing plants

  • fail to meet internationally acceptable standards.

  • The company conducted several thousand inspections,

  • audits and tests on food-processing plants in China

  • and found abnormal levels of pesticides, antibiotics,

  • heavy metals, bacteria, or viruses

  • that could put consumers at risk.

  • The Qima's vice president said,

  • There are horror stories, obviously”...

  • after the company published a report that

  • 48% of the thousands of food processing plants in China

  • did not meet the requirements set by Western

  • food trading companies and retailers.

  • Oh, and careful what you wash down your meals with, too, because...

  • Number 4

  • Toxic drinks.

  • The company that makes Jack Daniel's, Brown-Forman,

  • estimates that around 30% of all alcohol in China is fake.

  • But perhaps more shocking is a recent report that

  • nearly 40% of Chinese people knowingly buy fake booze.

  • Fake booze means it's not what the label says it is.

  • It could be anything from a cheaper brand

  • poured into a more expensive bottle,

  • to straight-up poisonous bootleg liquor

  • made in a bathtub.

  • And in some cases, fake booze can kill you.

  • Just like real booze

  • except fake booze can also kill you

  • in ways you don't expect.

  • That's what the World Health Organization's

  • representative in China says.

  • Where counterfeit alcohol

  • is made from poor quality ingredients

  • or toxic industrial chemicals,

  • consuming it could lead to

  • serious acute illness or worse.”

  • The nasty chemicals he's referring to

  • include antifreeze and methanol,

  • which can make you go blind.

  • And bottling conditions can be,

  • as one British newspaper reported,

  • perilously unsanitary.”

  • Which is a nice way of saying that counterfeiters

  • were caught bottling the booze in toilets.

  • In a recent case 22 people were poisoned

  • after drinking fake whisky at a bar southern China.

  • It's unclear how much they drank,

  • but according to local reports,

  • some experienced visual impairment,

  • dizziness and some even vomited.

  • Now while for some people that might sound like

  • just another Friday night,

  • it turns out the whiskey was poisonous,

  • and some of them ended up in intensive care unit

  • and nearly died.

  • Now you might think:

  • Liquor then beer,

  • you're in the clear.”

  • But even beer in China can make you sick.

  • In this video,

  • workers at an underground factory in Dongguan

  • are dunking used Budweiser cans into a tub of cheap beer

  • with their bare hands to fill them up.

  • Then the Budweiser-branded cans run along

  • a filthy conveyor belt where they get capped and presto,

  • ready to quench the thirst

  • or claim the life

  • of the unsuspecting night club goer.

  • Authorities estimated that the underground factory

  • churned out about 600,000 crates of fake Budweiser a month,

  • which were then distributed to bars and nightclubs.

  • Fake alcohol won't always kill you,

  • but you'll definitely have the worst hangover of your life.

  • For a quick recovery,

  • just remember,

  • drink plenty of water.

  • Just not the fake kind,

  • like from the illegal bottling plant near Shanghai,

  • where a man was busted filling empty jugs with dirty tap water

  • and passing them off as well-know brands like Nestle.

  • So...China is full of fake liquor and water.

  • I think I'll just stick with milk.

  • Unless, of course, it's...

  • Number 3

  • Tainted milk powder.

  • Back in 2008, 300,000 babies got sick

  • after drinking tainted milk powder

  • from the Chinese company Sanlu.

  • At least six of the babies died from kidney damage.

  • Eventually, two Sanlu executives also died.

  • From being executed.

  • The scandal was one of the worst consumer product scares

  • in modern Chinese history.

  • Partly because authorities tried

  • and failed

  • to cover it up.

  • Although they did successfully cover it up

  • until after the 2008 Beijing Olympics,

  • so they get at least a bronze medal for saving face.