generalspeaking

Beijing Crackdown

For a country concerned with the well-being of its people, China has been extraordinarily lax about exercising the full strength of its co-ordinated federal capabilities in ensuring food safety. It's not quite as though there was any reason for complacency, given the complaints coming out of China itself, added to the many alerts seen internationally as a result of dangerously corrupted food products discovered in the country's international market.

But Beijing, finally, now that its attention is no longer focused on the Beijing Olympics, is turning its concern to yet another scandal, this one quite outstripping previous food-related disasters, in the scope and extent of its impact. Fifty-three thousand children made ill, some seriously, resulting thus far in a handful of deaths, as a result of ingesting a dangerous chemical used in the formation of plastics-manufacturing.

And here's a bit of a stinker, countries all over the world, including mine, have discovered that melamine-laced products have infiltrated our food supply, as well. A popular sweet, called "White Rabbit", formerly withdrawn from the market because it contained formaldehyde, had its formula altered to ensure it reflected food safety guidelines; so what was added to the formula? Why, melamine.

Thirteen thousand Chinese infants in hospital, and the numbers are growing, with 104 in serious condition. All to satisfy the unbridled greed of unscrupulous manufacturers who sought to increase their profit margins. Children in Hong Kong are now showing up with illnesses related to melamine-laced milk products. While Swiss, German, and French investors in the Chinese milk-products market have seen their reputations singed.

On the one hand, it's a shame that Nestle, the Swiss food giant, has had its reputation besmirched in this way. But Nestle has long since proven itself with a less than stellar conscience when marketing its products. Nestle was responsible, through its advertising campaigns in Africa, for persuading lactating mothers that formula-based milk was superior to their own, that their babies would benefit from Nestle infant formula.

Poverty-stricken poor rural women wanting to be as modern as anyone else, and wishing to give their infants a superior quality milk product as advertised by Nestle, watered down the expensive formula, resulting in severe malnutrition for their children, and sometimes death. It seems fairly evident now that Chinese mothers of babies and infants have also been exposed to Nestle's value message.

A well-known critic and writer-editor in China who has written extensively about China's record on food safety has a very good point. Zhou Quing states that when even baby milk powder has been dangerously compromised, what are the chances for a full range of food products emanating from Chinese food manufacturers and distributors being safe for human consumption?

"I believe the whole food safety situation is worse than what we are now hearing about in the milk powder industry", he claims. "Common sense says that products meant for infants are usually produced to a higher standard in every country around the world. The infant industry is the last area any government wants to have a scandal in."

As though Chinese parents haven't enough reason to be outraged by their government which legislates one child per family, and then neglects the safety of school-age children through faulty construction in earth-quake-prone zones. Now those precious single children are further, and on a much wider scale, endangered by government lassitude in ensuring milk formula purity, not to mention other milk products consumed by children everywhere.

Contrast China's record to that of another country in the region. For example Japan, whose population demands a rigidly high standard of food quality and whose government ensures they receive just that. Japanese authorities insist on fastidious management of food products. Consumers demand freshness, safety and excellence in product management, and they get it.

Yet Mr. Zhou, in his investigations into Chinese food safety regulations has discovered such outrageous anomalies as fish farmers placing contraceptive pills in fish feed, and factories in Sichuan province using DDT in pickle vats to discourage the infiltration of insects, while in Guizhou Province, restaurants commonly add opiates to their sour fish soup to ensure customers return.

Corruption is endemic. A year ago the Chinese quality chief food regulatory official was found wanting in his duty to ensure safe food products; he was dismissed and in shame committed suicide. The current chief of food quality has now also been dismissed. China excels at perfunctorily solving such inconvenient problems by selecting scapegoats, then brushing off further criticisms.

Collusion between government agents and the company officials whose practices they are meant to supervise, is rife with payoffs and exemptions. How can the Chinese people trust the safety of such food products, and how can the world at large? In an interconnecting system of product disbursement internationally, we're certain to see an increasing eruption of such problems.

In Canada, for example, try to find garlic throughout the year for sale in supermarkets that doesn't come from China. You can, however, if you frequent area farmers' markets and buy directly from them, certain of their pride in their own products. Honey produced in China and suspected of harbouring harmful bacteria is used globally in bakery products throughout the world.

Products like instant coffee blends, now known to be contaminated by the addition of the chemical melamine, are available as an imported speciality in many places of the world. Why, an international consumer, should ask themselves, are we being offered food products like snap peas and snow peas grown in China then shipped around the world, when our own farmers produce them?

That old adage that cheaper is not always better was never as true as it is in this instance. China's grand plans to stretch its trade tentacles around the world through cheaper production methods so beloved of the world's consuming public is coming home to haunt us.

And we can stay tuned for more scandalous revelations and urgent food recalls.

Labels: Environment, Realities, Viewpoint, World News

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 24, 2008