Chinese Food Takes A Beating
180 Plants Shut Down, 23,000 Food Safety Violations, A Death Penalty and More To Come
After weeks of insisting that food here is largely safe, regulators in China said Tuesday that they had recently closed 180 food plants and that inspectors had uncovered more than 23,000 food safety violations. The nationwide crackdown, which the government said began last December, also found that many small food makers were using industrial chemicals, banned dyes and other illegal ingredients in things like candy and seafood. The government has moved aggressively in recent months to enforce food safety regulations and to weed out fake or contaminated food products. Regulators said an investigation involving 33,000 law enforcement officials found illegal food-production and meat-processing operations, fake soy sauce and the use of banned food additives. Experts here say that the country’s food regulations are not being enforced and that small-business men are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to increase profit.Corruption and bribery are also part of the food and drug industry here. The former head of the food and drug watchdog agency was recently sentenced to death for accepting bribes and approving the licensing of substandard drugs. And now, a Ministry of Agriculture official is on trial in Beijing for accepting bribes in exchange for endorsing food products.
A. T. Kearney, an international management consulting firm, issued a report this week saying that one cause of food safety problems in China was inadequate logistics systems and a lack of cold storage. The firm said China needed to invest about $100 billion over the next 10 years to upgrade its logistics and refrigeration abilities and to put new standards into effect. In China, the study said, there are only about 30,000 refrigerated trucks for transporting food; the United States has about 280,000. Yikes!
