Market Watch - Homemade smoked bacon is a long-enjoyed delicacy in China’s famous Sichuan cuisine. But the meaty dish is now under fire as “the criminal culprit” responsible for the heavy air pollution, according to officials in Sichuan.
Dazhou, a municipality located in the northeastern corner of Sichuan province, has suffered from especially “severe air pollution” since earlier this month, according to the provincial environmental monitoring center.
But according to officials from Dazhou’s own environmental protection bureau, the main cause is the smoking of bacon by local residents, according to a report T by the state-run China News Agency.
And what’s worse is that Dazhou might not be alone. Over in the region’s largest city, the government-owned Chongqing Evening News reported that the centuries-old winter tradition of smoking pork was behind a recent climb in PM 2.5, a pollutant consisting of tiny particles that can affect lung function and cause other problems.
Note: This apparently does not apply to microwaved bacon
3 comments:
China consumes half of the world's pork every year. The production of pork on a massive scale is a filthy process that compromises not only air quality, but also land and water supplies and systems. How soon we forget the news from little more than year or so ago when Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. purchased the world's largest producer of pork, Smithfield Foods.
The Chinese are quite clever with such a move---they get their pork and we're stuck in the US having to contend with the residual consequences. It is at this point that the recent waves of 'Right to Farm' and 'Ag-Gag' amendments to state constitutions will be rued.
As Mark Bittman warned a year ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/opinion/bittman-on-becoming-chinas-farm-team.html?pagewanted=all
And then there is this:
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/16/hog-growers-lawyers-object-to-mentions-of-chinese/
This, too, merits consideration:
http://www.iowasource.com/health/CAFO_people_0905.html
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