By Annex Asia Publishing
Earlier this year, police from the southern province of Guangxi confiscated over 5,000 bottles of baijiu (the most popular hard liquor in China) from one of the local producers on the suspicion of containing Viagra. It is common practice in China to soak fruits, herbs and sometimes also snakes in baijiu for medicinal purposes. The practice of cutting it with Viagra appears simply to be a quicker way to the same ends. In addition, last week, while dining, a woman in the Guangdong province found fake rice grains made of rolled white paper in her supper.
Although this may be shocking to some people, to those more familiar with China’s food and alcohol safety problems, the amount of the confiscated baijiu bottles is actually quite small. Small-scale food safety incidents occur quite frequently in China- at least every few months. Among the most common type in breach of food quality standards are the mislabeling of product ingredients, the inclusion of misleading expiry dates and products containing traces of pesticides, antibiotics, viruses and bacteria.
A recent article in the South China Morning Post featured information from an independent quality inspector based in Hong Kong, who claimed to have conducted 7,000 audits in China in which more than 48 % of mainland food-processing factories failed to meet acceptable levels of safety standards in their tests and inspections last year.
Of course, ensuring safe food for the country’s population of 1.3 billion people is an incredibly laborious task. Although (especially in the small scale breaches) the cause is often entirely from manufacturers’ intentions to cut expenses by intentionally taking the risk of violating standards, in those larger and more systematic scandals, the officials are in fact part of the scheme. The current system allows enough room for corruption of officials with payoffs that allow manufacturers to cut corners.
Change is in sight, with President Xi’s overall crackdown on corrupt practices in all spheres of Chinese governance. Once China approaches the problem of official graft with vigor (as for example in the case of diseased pig’s meat in Jiangxi province), the food safety situation will certainly improve.
The legacy of food scandals in China includes most importantly the 2008 melamine-tainted infant formula, which affecting 300,000 infants, and the controversies surrounding expired meat that paralyzed McDonald’s operations last year. Even today, the aftermath of the infant formula scandal is present in China and it is one of the most common things Chinese tourist buy when travelling abroad.
It is therefore certain that these cases act as catalysts for policy-making and law enforcement processes, and thus China has made a great development since then. On the other hand, small scandals are frequent and even larger incidents occur from time to time. One thing is certain, Chinese consumers have no choice but to be extremely cautious with what they consume. Information gets around quickly and this type of bad publicity can ruin a successful company’s reputation, often in an irreversible way.
SOURCES:
“Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign can improve food safety in China,” SCMP
http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1681724/xi-jinpings-anti-graft-campaign-can-improve-food-safety
Danny Lee, “Half of Chinese food plants fail inspections,” SCMP
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1679772/nearly-half-chinese-food-plants-failed-inspections-quality-control
“離奇黑食品 婦稱吃半年才發現 汕頭假米攤開是紙條,” 苹果日报
http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/international/art/20150905/19283386
Venessa Wong, “McDonald’s Says China Expired Meat Scandal Will Dent Global Sales,” Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-08-04/mcdonalds-says-china-expired-meat-scandal-will-dent-global-sales
Li Jing, “Eight officials sacked after pork from diseased pigs sold for food in China,” SCMP
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1670397/officials-arrested-over-diseased-pork-scandal
Alice Yan,“China’s food safety scandals are turning Chinese onto healthy diets,” SCMP
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-effects-of-chinas-food-safety-scandals-2015-8
ANNEX ASIA
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