Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Only in China: Turning Old Leather Shoes into Gelatin Capsules

This is disturbing news. One factory in China - Xueyang Gelatin Factory in Hebei province - is manufacturing gelatin capsules. These gelatin capsules are used as carrier for medicines that consumers swallow and ingest.


The factory uses  rotten, discarded leather, called "blue leather," from shoe factories and textile companies; these are collected, treated with lye, bleached and boiled to produce the gelatin from the protein. 

The gelatin capsules were also found to contain high levels of heavy metals. 

[source