Is this a food safety issue?

giant, huge, monstrously outsized difference between paint and glaze. it isn't paint. lead is an ingredient in the glaze.

next question becomes; "under what circumstance will lead in a glaze come OUT of the glaze?" followed by "and how will it get into your food?"

the mere presence of lead in the glaze implies nothing.

all the talk about fumes, chinese toys, etc. is just people not focusing on the actual question.

instead of people throwing out guesses, how about a volunteer to EXPLAIN how it is unsafe? i'm begging. seriously. but no. it seems every issue here like this come down to "i don't know, it's a wild guess, but better safe than sorry". that's answering without giving an answer

sorry. just pissy today, and foolishness like this gets the better of me. i hope someone doesn't ask if it's ok to use aluminum foil in the egg, or my head will explode. :laugh:

Can I use aluminum (tin) foil in the egg?

How about this for your answer - do not, under any circumstances, ingest any chips that may, at any point in the future, come from the glaze and you'll be just fine.

In fact, that's good advice for life - don't eat paint, glaze, or pretty much anything else that isn't food. Common sense, it's not just for breakfast any more.

.... but I saw this girl on "My Strange Addiction" on tv eat glazed pots and cigarette ash 'n stuff... by the way, what's this I hear about Aluminum foil?!!

"but what about the lead coming off in your hand" "or the lead getting hot and i breath it in" "or lead can't be safe and i don't want it around my kids"

when you ignore logic, you can simply come up with question after question that implies something is bad, without ever have to explain why it is.

What my point was, if you are going to likely raise millions of dollars to start a company which hopes to sell many of these grills and their accessories and eventually return a profit to the investors, then why would you go down a road that would require a label to be placed firmly on the front of your product warning of lead issues. The point is not whether the lead in the product could harm you, rather it is the perception it creates in the average consumers' mind and thus will they be able to sell enough of these grills. Often the big box retailers will require these vendors to buy back certain levels of unsold inventory. Seems to me I would have avoided that business risk altogether.

This place used to be a lot more friendly

srq2625 wrote:

I sure learned a bunch of stuff from this thread - thanks all.

In the FWIW column, I did not, do not, and will not have plans to buy the cooker. Where I can, I like to buy USA (end of my political message:) ). Besides, I now have two BGE cookers. The new one is getting broken in this evening, see page 103 of the BGE cookbook (gee, I'm starting to sound like a phan-boi).

Interesting comment about stickers all over everything in PRK (that was so funny). I've seen these stickers on a small number of things here. I would guess it's because it's cheaper to sticker all of one's product rather than try to figure out where each item is going to be sold.

FYI......if you weren't aware, BGE's are made in Mexico.

define "made"

:laugh:

FWIW, I doubt this company raised "millions of dollars" or has "investors" - if it's a Chinese knockoff, they probably paid a bunch of kids the equivalent of $0.10 / day to try to do their best to reverse engineer the Egg, any patent and / or copywrite infringements be d*mned... :evil:

Many of these companies are western and US backed enterprenuers who secure manufacturing contracts over in China with Chinese sub-contract manufactures. There are thousands of these Chinese manufacturing companies ready to make anything and everything. You are right that the cost to manufacturer overseas is used as their competitive angle in their business model. It's a very commonly used model by US entreprenuers. The Chinese still lack the design capablilities & marketing contacts with US retailers/wholesalers to make significant inroads on their own. Although that is beginning to change.

the lead is only in the glaze.... in trace amounts.... most of which burned off in the firing process.... i'd wait for it to go on sale and consider buying it.... rr

I agree wholeheartedly that the company may very well be backed by, and/or even located in the US (though I wouldn't exactly call them "entreprenuers")

However, whether it's the case of them being backed by Western $$, or it's a wholly owned Chinese / overseas company, their business model is what I refer to as the "vulture model" - meaning, they've stolen something that has proven to be successful from some other business, changed it slightly, and then pushed it out there to the marketplace to try to capitalize on the brand recognition of the original (or to capitalize on the "fad" that is current, in other cases).

Perhaps I'm more "old school" when it comes to business ventures, but if you're gonna take someone else's idea, at least IMPROVE upon it, rather than just blatantly copying it. Even the president of the BGE "borrowed" the idea of a kamado-style cooker & improved upon it.

Anyway, just my $0.02 (hops off of soap-box) :P

The ceramics are cast and finished south of the SW border. Not sure where the band/spring assembly/hinge is manufactured, but believe it to be in a different facility than the mexico plant or Atlanta office/warehouse(s).
You already know this, why you picking on me? :P

Hillbilly-Hightech wrote:

Your profile says you're in VA, so I don't know why they'd put that sticker on a product there... however, they have those stickers EVERYWHERE in the People's Republik of Kalifornia (PRK)...

Because if the product is shipped to California, it has to have the prop 65 label. Many companies who do business in California routinely label all their products regardless of where they're going, simply because of the repercussions if there is a mistake. Thanks to the bounty system California uses to encourage private lawyers to search for Prop 65 violations, it's just too costly to make a mistake.

I used to have to deal with prop 65 all the time in a previous job. We used to get calls from panicked customers all the time. "Our employees think your product is going to give them cancer." Funny thing is, those calls came from every state EXCEPT CA. Consumers and employees in CA turn a blind eye to the ubiquitous prop 65 warnings, because they know they mean nothing. Sure sign of an effective warning system.

I remember travelling to San Diego and noticing a Prop 65 warning sign on the entrance to our hotel. "This hotel contains substances known to the State of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm."

I also remember painting our house right before we moved in (this was while I was still in the job where I had to explain why Prop 65 is a load of BS to customers on a weekly basis), and my wife brought a can of the paint we were using and asked if we were at risk. My response? "No dear, that's only if you live in California."