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den4
Nov 19, 2004, 08:20
First it was the potstickers made from garbage coming out of Korea, then it was the tainted instant cup-noodle style stuff out of China...and now this...
this is just wrong.... :(



Chinese soy sauce from human hair leaves fatal aftertaste in Japan

By Ryann Connell
Staff Writer

November 17, 2004

Chinese soy sauce made from human hair is cancer causing and restaurants throughout Japan could be using it, screams Asahi Geino (11/25).

From January to September last year, 653 tons of soy sauce was imported from China.

"Chinese restaurants make up the bulk of places in Japan that use Chinese soy sauce," an insider in the traditional Asian condiment industry tells Asahi Geino. "Chinese soy sauce goes better with Chinese food than the Japanese-made product does."

Fears about Chinese soy sauce were sparked by a report on Chinese TV that noted local makers were using human hair to create their condiments. Japanese soy sauce makers used to use human hair, too.

"During the Pacific War (World War II), food shortages meant that the soy beans used to make sauce instead became a foodstuff and hair was gathered from barbers and used to make ersatz soy sauce," Satoshi Noguchi, the boss of Noguchi Rihatsu barbershop in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, tells Asahi Geino.

Human hair makes an alternative to soybeans because it contains the amino acids that give the sauce its flavor. Some say Chinese soy sauce makers who use hair as an ingredient are posing a cancer risk because of the powerful chemicals they use to extract the amino acids from human hair.

Chinese soy sauce manufacturers say they want to continue making human hair sauce because it's much cheaper than using soybeans. But outrage caused the Chinese government to ban the process, although many unscrupulous soy makers continue prowling barbershops for their economic alternative.

"It's not the hair that causes cancer," the soy sauce business insider says, adding that it's possibly caused by MCP, a fluid in the body associated with the breakdown of proteins and increasingly accused of having a potential link to the disease.

China is clearly treating human hair sauce as a problem. Japan bans the use of soy sauce made from anything other than organic proteins, so the animal proteins in human hair sauce are naturally banned.

That's not to say some of the controversial sauce hasn't already been imported.

"We confirm ingredients and production methods at 31 inspection points at sea or airports throughout the country and have not had a single report of that nature since the start of this year," a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare says. "Perhaps this product was never imported."

Yet, most food inspections at customs are little more than a cursory glance at documents, keeping alive the possibility that some of the human hair sauce may have slipped through.

"It's just not realistic to examine all the soy sauce imported from China," a ministry spokesman tells Asahi Geino. "There's no way we could even possibly do it."

misa.j
Dec 5, 2004, 08:24
OMG, this is unbelievable! It is so gross!

den4, thanks so much for the info. I will be extra careful when I buy soy sauce. But, is there a way to tell if the soy sauce is really made with soy beans or not?

Lina Inverse
Dec 5, 2004, 12:14
Urgh... that's even way past gross! :mad: :sick:
I'll make extra sure I don't get Chines soy sauce next time I buy one.

Apollo
Dec 15, 2004, 02:16
I am glad that I don't have Chinese soy souce in my kitchen...:D

It sounds very disgusting!!!! :worried:

bossel
Dec 15, 2004, 04:29
Gross? Phhh! A lot of hot air...


Chinese soy sauce made from human hair is cancer causing and restaurants throughout Japan could be using it, screams Asahi Geino (11/25).

From January to September last year, 653 tons of soy sauce was imported from China.
"screams Asahi Geino": I think, that says it all. Just another scare story. AFAIK, there was only one brand of soy sauce with that problem: 红帅 (hong shuai).

Anyway, food ingredients from human hair haven't been too uncommon in the West either (the EU forbade the use only around the year 2002, I think). L-Cysteine, extracted from human hair, was widely used eg. for bakery products. Check out this website (http://www.albalagh.net/halal/col2.shtml) for details.

Quote:
"The source of L-Cysteine is human hair, chicken feathers, cow horn, petroleum by-products and synthetic material. It was reported by a food company that a Rabbi refused to Kosher certify L-cysteine from human hair obtained from a temple in India where hairs are cut because of religious rituals.
L-Cysteine is manufactured in Japan, China and Germany only. Human hair is the cheapest source for L-cysteine."


Japan bans the use of soy sauce made from anything other than organic proteins, so the animal proteins in human hair sauce are naturally banned.
Human hair is organic. Can't really see the logic in here.

Dream Time
Dec 15, 2004, 05:16
i love soy sauce.... but the chinese soy sauce we buy here are made in Canada, i hope that they don't use human hair

lexico
Jan 19, 2005, 00:17
First it was the potstickers made from garbage coming out of Korea, then it was the tainted instant cup-noodle style stuff out of China...and now this...
this is just wrong.... :(If that is true, "just wrong" would be a gross understatement. But if anyone looked into what's called the "rendering business" that got public attention during the Mad Cow Disease scare, one would realize that we already live in a world with a plethora of food products containing recycled animal refuse. We are not only talking about sanitary issues, or the Jewish Kosher Law, but cannibalism, animal cannibalism, and feeding our children trash from the butchers' shop. The nice smelling, pretty stuff on store shelves, like fruit jelly or licorice are essentially no different from the cooked babies in the pots of the cultural revolution. Cannibalistic soysauce is news, but the problem goes far deeper and wider than what this article is suggesting. BSD, or the mad cow disease, lapsed without giving us a clear understanding of the why, how, and how not. It's the whole industrial food chain that is suspected to have caused the disease, not one single protein called prion. This btw is the official view of the Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner who discoverd prion. Without a clear understanding of the nature of today's food industry, any unlimited number of similar diseases are bound to strike at random. And we don't even understand what it is. Our ignorance is even scarier than the hairy soy sauce.

You can read about the book Mad Cow USA! here. http://www.prwatch.org/books/madcow.html
Or you can bypass the intro and download the full text in pdf here. http://www.prwatch.org/pdfs/mcusa.pdf?q=books/mcusa.pdf

grey_elf
Jan 30, 2005, 05:04
Wow...wow... :worried: I'm glad I use only Japanese soy sauce, but will be very, very selective in what I purchase from now on.

Mimmy_08
Feb 13, 2005, 01:19
OOOHHHH my gosh..I really need to inform my friends regarding this..

Thanks for the info Den4!