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CSU, Japanese To Research Imported Food & Products

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Nov 11, 2008 4:50 pm US/Mountain

CSU, Japanese To Research Imported Food & Products

Reporting
Mike Hooker
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) ― Colorado State University is joining hands with Japanese researchers to make sure food and products imported from other countries are safe.

CSU's new Center for Environmental Medicine will help address many of the concerns about the safety of food and other products that come to the U.S. from other countries.

China, for instance, comes up again and again because it's such an important exporter.

"Now about 90 percent of the world's vitamin C comes from China. It's not a problem, it's safe, but it's one of those things that we want to continue to make sure is safe," Prof. Bill Hanneman with the CSU Center for Environmental Medicine said.

Hanneman says vitamin C is one of the first imports researchers will study as part of the new center. The center will initially team students and faculty at CSU with their counterparts in Japan.

"Japan and the United States are very close allies in this because we're both consumers of goods from multiple international communities," Hanneman said. "And so we share a common bond, if you will, in trying to assure that products coming into our countries are safe."

Colorado's Gov. Bill Ritter spoke Monday before travelling to Asia for trade meetings and to help launch the project.

The scientists will also study problems like poisoning from heavy metals and pesticides. Soy beans are among the first products the center director expects to focus on.

"We just want to make sure that the beans, once they're harvested and run through the processing facilities, are in fact below the acceptable limits for pesticide residues," Hanneman said.

The work will leave students better prepared to conduct research in different cultures.

"The idea here is to train the next generation of scientists to tackle these problems and unexpected problems that we don't know about in the future," Hanneman said.

One benefit of having Japan as a partner is now researchers at CSU will have access to foreign products and manufacturing plants that U.S. scientists aren't normally granted.

CSU researchers say after partnering with Japan they hope to eventually forge a partnership with China as part of the Center for Environmental Medicine.

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