Naztazia wrote:
> I was ready to make ginger snap cookies this evening and a friend
> tells me that most ginger is grown in China. I said get out of town.
> So I call up McC spices and sure enough, their powdered ginger is
> indeed grown in China. Apparently even "fresh" ginger in my grocery
> store is too.


To top it off, my friend said there was a big recall
> back in July because of pesticides used on ginger products from China
> (nausea, headaches, etc).

The good news is, nobody died. The pesticide was;

aldicarb sulfoxide

Aldicarb is a systemic pesticide that has a dark grey to black,
granule_like appearance. It is applied to soil and taken up by plant
roots, but it is illegal to use aldicarb on certain crops because it can
be incorporated in the flesh of the fruit. Aldicarb is one of the most
toxic pesticides known, and as already said, its toxicity can be
expressed as a lethal dose (LD50) of about 6 mg/kg body mass orally.


trivia: this aldicarb has become popular in So. Africa. Burglars put it
in meat, to kill watchdogs. Supposedly, it only takes a few grams to
kill a rhino. Potent stuff.