http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/27/business/food.php
Chinese regulators find rampant abuses in food industry By David Barboza Wednesday, June 27, 2007 SHANGHAI: After weeks of insisting that food here is largely safe, regulators in China said that they had recently closed 180 food plants and that inspectors had uncovered more than 23,000 food safety violations. The nationwide crackdown, which began in December, also found that many small food makers were using industrial chemicals, dyes and other illegal ingredients in making a wide range of food products. The government has moved aggressively in recent months to enforce food safety regulations and to crack down on fake and counterfeit foods amid a series of global scares involving Chinese food exports. But the announcement Tuesday on the Web site of the country's top quality regulator, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, added fuel to concerns about rampant fraud in the food industry here. Regulators said 33,000 law enforcement officials had combed the nation and turned up illegal food-making dens, counterfeit bottled water, fake soy sauce, banned food additives and illegal meat processing plants. "These are not isolated cases," Han Yi, director of the administration's quality control and inspection department, told state-run news media. China Daily, the country's English-language newspaper, said Wednesday that industrial chemicals, including dyes, mineral oils, paraffin wax, formaldehyde and malachite green, had been found in the production of candy, pickles, biscuits, and seafood. Regulators said they also learned that sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid were being used to process shark fin and ox tendon. These chemicals are often toxic or corrosive and can be used in everything from drain cleaners and fertilizer to surfboard wax. These types of findings have become all too common in China. For instance, in 2005, officials in south China found a company repackaging food waste and shipping it to 10 other regions. Last week, officials said a company in Anhui Province, not far from Shanghai, was selling a two-year-old rice dumpling mix as fresh, according to the state-controlled media. Chinese exports of contaminated vegetable protein this year prompted one of the largest pet food recalls in U.S. history. Tainted food ingredients also leeched into U.S. meat and fish supplies, and other problem foods, like tainted fish, have turned up in Europe and other parts of Asia. China has strongly denied that its food exports are hazardous and has seemingly retaliated in recent weeks by seizing American and European imports. China said this week that it had impounded two U.S. shipments of food because the orange pulp and apricots contained "excessive amounts of bacteria and mold." Regulators also blocked imports of Evian water from France this year, saying bacteria levels in the water exceeded national standards. Experts here say that the country's food regulations are not being enforced and that small businesses go to extraordinary lengths to make a profit. Corruption and bribery have also infected the food and drug industry. The former head of the food and drug regulator was recently sentenced to death for accepting bribes and approving the licensing of substandard drugs. A Ministry of Agriculture official is now on trial in Beijing for accepting bribes in exchange for endorsing food products. But not all the problems stem from corruption or malfeasance. A.T. Kearney said in a report this week that one cause of food safety problems was a lack of cold storage and logistics systems. The consulting firm said China needed to invest about $100 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade such systems and to implement new standards. In China, the study said, there are only about 30,000 cold storage trucks. In the United States, there are about 280,000. "In the entire supply chain there's no common standard or world class standard," said Zhang Bing, who helped prepare the study. "There are a lot of things contributing to the food safety problem. There are companies putting chemicals into food. But there's also a lot of spoilage." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
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