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Watermelon Landmines

Oh, China.

The flying pips, shattered shells and wet shrapnel still haunt farmer Liu Mingsuo after an effort to chemically boost his fruit crop went spectacularly wrong.

Fields of watermelons exploded when he and other agricultural workers in eastern China mistakenly applied forchlorfenuron, a growth accelerator. The incident has become a focus of a Chinese media drive to expose the lax farming practices, shortcuts and excessive use of fertiliser behind a rash of food safety scandals.

It follows discoveries of the heavy metal cadmium in rice, toxic melamine in milk, arsenic in soy sauce, bleach in mushrooms, and the detergent borax in pork, added to make it resemble beef.

...

"In general we don't suggest chemicals with plant hormones be used on watermelons, as they are very sensitive. They might end up looking very strange and people will not want to buy them," said Cui Jian, director of the vegetable research institute at Qingdao Academy of Agricultural Science. [no shit. --min]
...

Many farmers grow their own food separately from the chemically-raised crops they sell. "I feel there is nothing safe I can eat now because people are in too much of a hurry to make money," said Huang Zhanliang, a farmer in Hebei.

Link

Now, the bit about the birth control in the cucumbers....I could get behind that.

By min | May 17, 2011, 3:00 PM | Liberal Outrage


Reference from SuperMegaMonkey

In March, China reported having a run on salt due to fear of radiation from Japan's melting nuclear reactors. In May, they had exploding watermelons. With all these showier, more exciting ways to be poisoned, you might have forgotten about...    Read More: Salt for Radiation, Garlic for Lead