[RUSTYME]

Soy sauce made from human hair
Stories began circulating in the press about cheap soy sauces made from human hair. These sauces were manufactured in China using a chemical amino acid extraction process similar to artificially hydrolyzed soy sauces and then quietly exported to other countries. An investigative report that aired on Chinese television exposed the unsanitary and potentially contaminated sources of the hair:

“ When asking how the amino acid syrup (or powder) was generated, the manufacturer replied that the powder was generated from human hair. Because the human hair was gathered from salon, barbershop and hospitals around the country, it was unhygienic and mixed with condom, used hospital cottons, used menstrual cycle pad, used syringe, etc.[57] ”

In response, the Chinese government banned production of soy sauces made from hair. Other carcinogens remain, see 3-MCPD.

the above was taken from wikipedia,the full article about food safety in China can be read here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safety_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-MCPD

The reason I have put this information up , is I am completely against GM food .  I use a lot of soy sauce and know that huge amounts of soy bean IS GM . Very little information  can be found on the bottles as to wether it is GM free , and I even doubt the information if it is claimed to be free !!!
Anyway , I wanted to see about growing my own soy beans . They are easy to grow , that much I knew , but I wanted to see if I could get GM free seed. Now although I didn't look too hard I couldn't find any GM free seed. So remembering that Tesco said they would go completely GM free back in about 1999 , I thought buy some soy beans and grow them . This I have done and the ones I tried gave 100% germination . I won't get a crop from them as I only sprouted them a week or so ago. But at least I know they are viable. Why pay £2 or more for a pack of 20 or so bean seeds when you can buy a 500 grm pack for 80p ?
I have also tried all of tesco's dried beans ,  recently I tried a batch of azuki beans (adzuki)  , and they have all sprouted fine too .
  Now the problem begins ..Tesco have apparently announced that they are going to reconsider their non GM approach , as there is so much GM product about now that it is very difficult to avoid using . Are my soy beans GM free ? well I am going to ask tesco before I grow them next season .
 Back to the human hair bit.... yuk ... this really makes me puke ....I thought at first that this was one of those urban myth things that circulate about all sorts of things . But then I found information about the Chinese government  shutting down companies making the stuff. The hair WAS used to make soy sauce and still is used , as mentioned in the article, for food production . 
  Needles to say , my stock of soy sauce went in the bin ..only two bottles ... but I am not even going to chance eating bits of boiled human beings ... no thank you ....puke ..puke ... hugheeee puke... puke ... For anyone that says  " oh it will be fine " or  " if it tastes ok , what does it matter ?" , well if they are ok with eating it fine ... let them ... but I am not going to  ...  puke puke....
   What is the world coming too ...? GM Rice with human genes in it , soy sauce made from human hair .... pigs with human genes in them ... why not just start eating people  ? just think of it ... " what are you having for dinner tonight  ? "  " oh I think I will have a Chinese "  ?  would that be meal or person ? .. or would it be person meal ?  puke puke ...
   Soylent Green again .... I am sure the people that are doing these things watched that film and thought ..." too many people , not enough food , cook some people , problem solved " ...

 Food for thought......

cheers

Russ

[cameldairy]

GROSS!!!! we use a lot of soy sauce here too, I wonder how do we find out it's real process?

[HappyHippy]

Owweee - I think I'll join in with the pukeing ! 
It's truly gross 

[RUSTYME]

GROSS!!!! we use a lot of soy sauce here too, I wonder how do we find out it's real process?

the only way to be completely sure would be to follow back the sauce from bottle to bean !! Don't think I will be doing that !! The only other way to be sure you are not eating people ( or parts thereof ) would be to grow your own soy beans and make your own sauce .
  It doesn't seem very hard to do , from what I have read , just long winded and drawn out . However , as soy sauce keeps almost forever ( it improves with age like wine ) , you would only need to grow enough beans to make a 45 gallon drum of sauce , and you have a life long supply , depending on how much you use . Simples ....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzZs3kChzJw
The link above gives one mans way of making soysauce .   It is one of 4 video clips he has put on youtube so far. After watching the first clip just click on 2 , 3 and 4 , in turn .
    So if you live in the USA, buy his soy sauce and you have clean , pure soy sauce ? ( but where is the live yeast culture obtained ? is that clean and pure ? ) .


cheers

Russ

[sandy]

Glad I don't use it!!!

[Snoopy]

WOW Russ  if you find out about the tesco stuff you managed to grow, please post a picture
of the packet on here so that we can all go out and buy seeds.

How long will the seed last - will it fair well if vaccum packed? 

Julie   

PS  Thanks a Million for coming back mate

[RUSTYME]

Hello Julie,
            not asked Tesco so far , about the soy beans . But the ones I sowed are growing like mad . They are all leggy and floppy , but I popped a few outside as well and they were exactly the same till the dogs ate them . I probably best not put a picture of the packet on here , just in case I slag Tesco off for some reason  ( there are many I could kick off on  !!) , and they take umbrage (isn't that where the Archers come from ? dum te dum te dum te dum , dum te dum te dum tee ) and take me to court for showing pictures of their products. However , the stuff to buy, is just the dried beans 500 Gram pack . The same with all dried beans under tesco's name . They all sprout and grow. I have had some for more than two years now and still pop them in a tray of water to see if they sprout , and they do . They don't go to waste , as I just eat them as bean sprouts  !!!!  really nice they are too. Once I open a packet, I store them in empty 200 gram coffee jars , and they keep fine.  If you want named varieties then you have to buy the seed packets from the seed catalogues or garden centres, but if you just want beans , or peas  they work too , or whole lentils (not split ) , mung beans , canelleni beans , harricot beans , red kidney beans , broad beans , butter beans , they all sprout and grow well . If you want red poppies you can buy the 250 gram pack for cooking , they sprout too , and you get millions and millions of them . Just about any whole dried seed will sprout ( I think some may be heat dried and therefore won't sprout) but just test and see. All you need do is pop a few seeds from the pack, in a coffee jar lid , put some water in and the either sprout or they don't .It takes 3-4 days usually to sprout , but anything up to about 14  . Just be sure they are GM free .
  The beans will keep for ages unopened , I think some of mine have 2011 on them .

cheers

Russ

[RUSTYME]

Just spoke to tesco on the phone, and they assure me that the soy beans are completely GM free, and should remain so for some time . They would also put it on the packs if anything does or even may contain GM ingredients. So all seems ok on that score for now, fingers crossed .
 
cheers

Russ

[Snoopy]

Oh god - still trying to recover from all the laughing of two posts up -
it bloody hurts to laugh with this fractured clavicle thingy - please dont stop
though, its great to have ye back

Thanks for ringing your fave shop - and thanks for info
 

[sellickbhoy]

i wish i had your faith in Tesco Rusty.

[RUSTYME]

sadly, I have no faith in Tesco at all . But I thought it best to just say what I was told and let everyone make up their own mind.
   I , however , reserve judgement !! Although I would hate anybody to think I was paranoid or I was a conspiracy theorist ? ( they may be reading my posts though  !!!) . 


cheers

Russ

[northfifeduckling]

For foodstuff like that - go organic. Japanese macrobiotic items should be ok, a health food store will be able to order them for you or you can contact a wholesaler (Suma, Green City) for info on shops they supply near you. If you fulfill their criteria they might even deliver to you. I would not trust any supermarket as far as I can throw their managers on issues like GM .
I bet that soy from human hair would have helped China in reducing the waste from all those political prisoners they killed, super idea to export them in part and the West has no idea with their preoccupation with human rights  But wasn't the method of extracting proteins this way actually invented in Britain (if I remember correctly)?

[RUSTYME]

an update on the dried beans etc.
  I have bean (haha) trying to find out if the beans are F1 types or not . I know nearly all germinate fine , but I don't know if they will come true to type ? I have grown beans this way before , but that was before the F1 hybrids really took over.
The only information I seem able to get is 'Product of ' and then the country . Not like spuds where you even get the farm and  farmers name printed on the bag. The thing to do would be trial growing I suppose , if they come up uniform then they would be ok , all higgledy piggledy and they would most likely be F1 ...forget job.
 Even organic beans etc could be F1's so not much help there either . The amount of old veggies that are dissappearing is unbelievable   . So I guess it may be best to grin and bare the cost of named ones and save those seeds , at least that way the smallholder/allotment grower can save
our seedbank from the likes of Monsanto .
 I think in future I will try to save at least 10% of what I grow  as seed , ie if I grow 2000 carrots , then allow 200 to go to seed the following year. That would give many thousands of seeds , more than I would need in a year . But it would provide seeds for 2 or 3 years for me and still some to give away / swap with other people doing the same. That way I could grow a different variety each year  ,(for stuff that would cross breed ) , for a few years then back to the first one again . This would work fine with seed that keeps for a few years . Seed that doesn't keep would need to be sown each year .
  I shall have to set up a few small areas on the land , as far apart as possible , where I can pop a few dozen veggie plants to go to seed . I will also make a list of all the veg that I grow and save at least 10 times what I actually need . Carrots , onions , leeks , radishes , cabbages , cauliflowers , broccoli , lettuce , peas , beans , tomato , marrow , should all be easy to sort out . Just a matter of planning it out and remembering to do it !!!
  I did this with grass seed to provide my needs on the land. Just the corners here and there sown with named grass types , and allowed to set seed . This was then harvested by hand , only a 20 minute job in the small areas I did . Some was sown back in situ and the bulk was sown as a mix on the rest of the land. This was fine till the horses sussed out the fact that there was nice long untouched grass here and there. I got many buckets full of grass seed and all of the type I wanted , so it works , as long as I can keep the horses off !!
 
 cheers

Russ

[doganjo]

Great to have you back, Russ!  You should be on the stage as a stand up comic - all those who didn't realise it was the truth would be laughing their socks off.