The Latest Trend? Are Manufacturers Removing the Made In China Label?

In September and October 2008, after the news that Lotte Koala cookies were tainted with melamine, I gathered up all the Lotte Koala cookies I had in my kitchen and put them aside. I saved them in a plastic bag. I originally had hoped to test the products using a lab located near where I live. As the news about melamine-tainted food began to include more and more products, I went through my home to find more food products from China or the suspect ingredients. One of the products I found was "Sipahh Milk Flavoring Straws". It was the word "milk" that caught my eye. The outer box had the Made In China label, and stated that the product was made by Unistraw and distributed by The Jel Sert Company. The inner straw packaging had the Made In China label as well. Still, the product did not list any milk ingredients, yet I set it aside because it listed "artificial flavor" as an ingredient and I was simply feeling cautious about any processed food at that point.

This week, I was shopping in my local Vons supermarket and saw the Sipahh straws on the shelf. I picked up the product and held it and noticed that the box did not say Made In China near the UPC code like the one I bought last year. I bought a box and took photographs to show the comparison of the Made In China label that was present and is now gone.

Additionally, both packages have expiry dates. The old box expiration date is listed as 190109, or day 19, month January and year 2009. The new box expiration date states "best before Jun 2009". The inner packaging expiration date of the product in the old box is consistent with the date of the old box itself. However, the inner packaging expiration date of the product in the new box is inconsistent with the date on the new box. The inner packaging expiry date of the new box states "060109", which to me means, January 6, 2009. But the outside of the new box says "best before Jun 2009". Does "060109" mean June 1, 2009? If so, then does the old box expiration date also list month first? What month is month 19?

Further, the box I bought last year has a batch code on the box and batch code on the inner packaging that match. But the new box that I bought has one batch code on the box and a different batch code on the inner packaging. The outside batch code starts with WA on the new box and the inside packaging from that new box has a batch code that starts with an "A" .


Or does the product that came in the new box actually expire 17 days before the product in the old box and months before the date on the outside of the box it came in? Or did the company suddenly start manufacturing the product in the United States? The new packaging also omits salt as an ingredient. Are the new zero-sodium Sipahhs the reason for all the new labeling?

Confused? I don't blame you.

The point is this: There are questions that need to be answered; three questions, perhaps more:
1) Why do some boxes, presumably older boxes, display the Made In China label, and why do newer boxes apparently replace that label with a number?
2) Why are the expiration dates inconsistent? It is unclear if the date is meant to read month day year or day month year.
3) Why does the outside of the box purchased in January 09 have a batch code that starts with "WA" on the outside and a batch code that starts with "A" on the inside?

And the number one point is: Expiration and batch code numbers aside, the Made In China label is on boxes with expiration dates of January 2009 and not on boxes with expiration dates of June 2009.


The COOL (Country Of Origin Labeling) labels are highly controversial because they do not list the origins of all the ingredients in processed foods. More thorough labeling would help consumers, give more power to consumers, and perhaps allow consumers to make more healthful choices about the "food" they eat. The discovery of the false labeling on the Sipahh straws demonstrates that perhaps the industry has decided that going incognito might help sales and might help manufacturers retain consumers who are already shying away from Chinese-made products. Is this evidence that such large numbers of consumers are shunning Chinese-made products or evidence that such a large numbers of "food" products are made in China?

Seriously...why do we have labeling in the first place?