Friday, June 29, 2007
China Shutters Food Factories. So?
There are news reports that China has closed down many food producing factories. Here's something from industry news outlet ThomasNet.com:
Forbes also reports that it's unclear whether any of the cases being brought to court involved foods for export. But the problem here is that you can't just look at what products have officially been designated as exports. Counterfeiting is a huge problem worldwide. "It’s happened in the food business as well," said Neil Smith, an intellectual property attorney with Sheppard Mullin, when I interviewed him a couple of years ago about the issue of counterfeiting. "In some cases, oriental food products. In a lot of cases they’ll come in from China, or Chinese herbs like ginseng products, that will be counterfeited and you’ll see those in the wholesale market or in the stores."
If "regular" food products made in China can wind up with industrial chemicals as an ingredient, why would anything think that counterfeits would be an exception? The only difference is that the people who counterfeit are by definition doing something cut-rate to fool people. I see this as a complete PR exercise, at least right now. Perhaps there is a change in attitude among Chinese leaders, but they'll have to prove it over a period of years, and not on simply as an exception to business as usual. Let's not forget the second to the last paragraph in the Thomas.net story:
Acknowledging systematic problems in its food supply, the Chinese government said it closed 180 food manufacturers and revoked 37 processing licenses of food makers found to have used industrial chemicals and additives in food products.The notice came in a state-run newspaper in response to uproar around the world because of industrial chemicals found in food and health products. Apparently the ingredients were used from December 2006 to May 2007. And here's an admission according to Forbes.com:
The watchdog said it had found 23,000 cases of adulterated food nationwide in the six months, or 128 a day, involving 200 million yuan ($26 million) worth of products including flour, candy, pickles, biscuits, bean curd and seafood. Eleven cases have been handed over to courts.Good that they're doing something, but, really, so what? Amazing that the government was able so quickly to pinpoint all these facilities. That leaves me, at least, with deep distrust and a suspicion that government officials must have known about most of this all along. According to Forbes, the government "claimed that cases of food contamination were isolated," but clearly it couldn't have really thought so.
Forbes also reports that it's unclear whether any of the cases being brought to court involved foods for export. But the problem here is that you can't just look at what products have officially been designated as exports. Counterfeiting is a huge problem worldwide. "It’s happened in the food business as well," said Neil Smith, an intellectual property attorney with Sheppard Mullin, when I interviewed him a couple of years ago about the issue of counterfeiting. "In some cases, oriental food products. In a lot of cases they’ll come in from China, or Chinese herbs like ginseng products, that will be counterfeited and you’ll see those in the wholesale market or in the stores."
If "regular" food products made in China can wind up with industrial chemicals as an ingredient, why would anything think that counterfeits would be an exception? The only difference is that the people who counterfeit are by definition doing something cut-rate to fool people. I see this as a complete PR exercise, at least right now. Perhaps there is a change in attitude among Chinese leaders, but they'll have to prove it over a period of years, and not on simply as an exception to business as usual. Let's not forget the second to the last paragraph in the Thomas.net story:
Despite that, Chinese authorities said yesterday they had logged 68,000 cases of adulterated food in 2006 and withdrew 15,500 tons of substandard food from the market.That's a whole lot of food. I wonder how many cases they miss.
Labels: China, contamination, counterfeit, fast food
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
China's Former Food, Drug Head Sentenced to Death
Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of China's food and drug administration from 1998 to mid-2005, was removed from the position. The reason? Bribery and corruption. And on Tuesday, after pleading guilty to the charges, he was given a death sentence.
Before writing this off as Chinese indifference to the individual and having an unbalanced view of justice, realize that this situation with bad products hitting the market has been serious. For all the problems the U.S. has seen with Chinese food imports and deadly pet food, it's nothing compared with the deaths that China has experienced as the result of bad antibiotics and drugs. Then a key ingredient in antifreeze appeared in cough syrup and tooth paste shipped to Central and South America, with 100 dying last year in Panama alone, according to the New York Times account. (However, USA Today puts the number at 51, once again showing the collective objective accuracy that is the United States press.)
Zheng got richer to the tune of $832,000 ($850,000, according to the Times), not that it will do him any good now. China is under huge pressure to reform its safety record. According to USA Today, "Zheng's sentence requires review by a higher court and approval by China's highest judicial panel before he can be executed."
It could be that this is window dressing, as USA Today reports:
Before writing this off as Chinese indifference to the individual and having an unbalanced view of justice, realize that this situation with bad products hitting the market has been serious. For all the problems the U.S. has seen with Chinese food imports and deadly pet food, it's nothing compared with the deaths that China has experienced as the result of bad antibiotics and drugs. Then a key ingredient in antifreeze appeared in cough syrup and tooth paste shipped to Central and South America, with 100 dying last year in Panama alone, according to the New York Times account. (However, USA Today puts the number at 51, once again showing the collective objective accuracy that is the United States press.)
Zheng got richer to the tune of $832,000 ($850,000, according to the Times), not that it will do him any good now. China is under huge pressure to reform its safety record. According to USA Today, "Zheng's sentence requires review by a higher court and approval by China's highest judicial panel before he can be executed."
It could be that this is window dressing, as USA Today reports:
Qiu Feng, an independent scholar and columnist for China Newsweek magazine, wrote on the website Southcn.com that Zheng's sentence would do little to end deeply entrenched graft.There's also a problem of counterfeit food that the papers and some other accounts mention in passing. Counterfeiting of products is an enormous problem, and one of the big categories is in food, particularly packaged Asian foods. Those simply won't be touched by improved official inspections because, by definition, counterfeit products are outside the official manufacturing and inspection systems. The deaths and injuries we've seen will likely to continue until counterfeiting itself is reduced, separately from increasing regulation.
Labels: Asian, China, Chinese, counterfeit, food safety, government
