Food safety lacking
The international furore over tainted foods and unsafe exports has the Chinese news media responding in typical fashion. Newspapers have featured commentaries complaining about international efforts to start a trade war in an effort to settle trade imbalances. Read a newspaper in China and you will see the familiar defense: there is nothing wrong with food quality in China; the rest of the world is trying to keep China down.
In reality, the quality of China’s exports far surpasses that of goods sold on the local market. The Chinese media’s scant coverage of that keeps Chinese consumers at constant risk.
According to The New York Times article, As China’s Economy Roars, Consumers Lack Defenders, a few savvy shoppers are awakening to the growing dangers:
“I have no idea what we can and cannot eat nowadays,” said Feng Jiangping, 40, as she shopped in a Shanghai street market. “I have stopped eating many things based on media reports. Recently I have stopped eating turbot, river eel, eggs from free-range chickens.”
“I don’t know how the government manages food-safety things,” added Ms. Feng, a saleswoman for a chemical company. “I only know there is less and less safe food for us to eat.”
The food-safety crisis underscores the shortcomings of the state-controlled media, which continues to insist that the foreign media is exaggerating food safety issues. But all indicators of truth suggest the situation is worsening.
“China’s food and drug situation has worsened over the last 10 years,” said Wang Hai, one of the country’s few prominent consumer advocates. “Before, it was only small and informal workshops that would churn out fake food and drugs, but nowadays many big companies have joined in. The main reason, I think, is that penalties are not stiff enough to stop wrongdoers from making bad products, but there are many other faults in our consumer safety system, as well.”
He said those included the lack of accountability in the main watchdog agencies for food and drug quality.
Read the complete Times report: As China’s Economy Roars, Consumers Lack Defenders.
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