Latest Articles by Zhou Qing

China's food fears (part one)

Qing Zhou — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:05:00 +0000

Concerns about the safety of China’s food are on the rise. In the first segment of a two-part investigation, Zhou Qing looks at the underside of food production, from opiates in soup to pesticides in pickles.

Perhaps the biggest difference between food in the West and in China is that Chinese people like to eat lots of little snacks whereas Westerners prefer one ‘main meal’. In the West, restaurants and fast food outlets produce standardised meals, where quantities are strictly regulated. But the Chinese have a long history of eating snacks. Traditionally an agricultural country, when farmers went out onto the fields, they would bring snacks with them to eat and to share with friends, or would swap them with farmers from neighbouring villages. The quality of the snack was important – it would indicate how skilful the wife was in the kitchen and help the family to maintain their ‘face’. So over the centuries the quality of these snacks became better and better, so that gradually, all over China, one could find snacks that were both delicious and safe.

I think that when people eat snacks, their trust in what they are eating and the need to ‘keep face’ is more important than the actual eating of the snack itself. But now these snacks that have such a long and glorious history strike terror in people’s hearts. Let’s just look at pickled vegetables. Although pickled vegetables were first made in Sichuan, there is hardly anyone in the whole country who hasn’t tasted this delicious snack. But now when you visit Sichuan, your friends will say to you: ‘Do you like pickled vegetables? There’s a factory in Chengdu that pickles the vegetables in DDVP.’ In the past everyone in Sichuan would have pickled vegetables with their meals, but now the managers of some pickled vegetable factories say that, ‘We don’t eat any of these pickles in Sichuan, we sell them to people from other provinces.’

After some secret interviews, I finally uncovered the truth about this business. The most important part of the pickling process is the soaking. I noticed that the salt used in the pickling was not only whiter than most salt, but the grains were finer. So I asked, ‘How come it’s so white?’ The manager said, ‘This salt is bought on the black market. It’s cheaper by 50 yuan a jin.’ Later in the yard outside, I saw printed on the bags of salt the terrifying words, ‘Industrial Salt’, and ‘Not for human consumption.’

The workers of this factory showed me in another yard neatly arranged piles of this industrial salt. I asked, ‘Have you always used this salt?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Do the other factories use it?’ And the workers all nodded in reply. A few days later I returned to the factory, and noticed lots of little insects crawling around the vats of pickled vegetables, and I asked why there were so many insects. The manager said, ‘When we soak the vegetables there are always a lot of insects, but when we add the chemicals they all disappear.’ A little later, a worker started adding chemicals to the vats. I asked what the chemicals were and the worker replied that they were insect killers. He also said that to ensure that no insects got to them, the pickles would be sprayed with insecticide every two or three days until they left the factory. When I asked exactly what kind of insecticide it was, both the manager and the workers said that they didn’t know. Because there was no label on the bottle of the chemical they used, I took a small sample of the red liquid, put it in a sealed container and sent it off to be checked by the China Food Import Export Investigation Centre, and was told that this chemical was 99% strength DDVP . . .

Only about a third of the pickles produced in Chengdu meet with the regulations imposed by the Chengdu Quality Inspection Department. On 16 June 2004, the Chengdu Quality Inspection Department announced the results of its survey into pickled vegetables. Of 70 batches of products produced by 56 factories, only 16 batches made the grade, which is a pass rate of just 22.86%. 17 batches had levels of additives above the maximum allowed. It was also discovered that 9 batches did not have as much product as labelled and 48 batches had labels that were inaccurate or had insufficient information. The Quality Inspection Department has requested that all those companies that didn’t make the grade rectify their mistakes.

In Guizhou there is a saying that ‘If you don’t eat something sour for three days, your legs will go soft’. The Guizhou restaurants have become famous for their sour fish soups, but recently 215 of them have developed some serious problems. On 16 June 2004, it was found that in 215 restaurants, there were high levels of opiates in their soup and flavourings, and the authorities have ordered these restaurants to be closed down. Zhang Xin, deputy head of Guizhou’s Anti-drug team, told me that the Anti-drug team joined forces with the disease prevention centre and the food quality inspection department to launch a campaign against the addition of opiates to food products. A combined investigation team carried out research in to 2642 restaurants in Guiyang, Bijie and Liupanshui, and found that in 215 restaurants, the food sold contained traces of opiates in varying quantities. During the campaign, 3,200 grams of opiate seeds and 1,700 grams of opiate shells were confiscated. The relevant authorities have closed these 215 restaurants, and ordered 36 other restaurants whose problems were a less serious to undergo retraining. It is said that many Guizhou restaurants that specialise in beef, lamb, dog, and spicy soups add opiates to their food so as to encourage their customers to return. Wei Tao, the deputy head of the Guizhou Disease Prevention Office, told me that some of the soups served at the restaurants contain traces of morphine, some in rather high quantities. He said that if the customers drink this soup over a long period of time they can become addicted to it, and their dependency might even drive them to take harder drugs.

Again in Guizhou, a recent survey undertaken by the National Hygiene Authority discovered that of the 30 street stalls selling fried dough sticks that they inspected, the levels of aluminium in the sticks all exceeded the national standards. Not one made the grade. One of the stalls even sold sticks that had aluminium levels 11 times higher than those allowed. The reason for this was that the street traders had little knowledge of food safety, and during the cooking process added too much alum to the dough.

According to one food producer, the restaurants that serve ‘oil boiled fish’ tend to use the same oil over and over again. What usually happens is that after the fish has been eaten, the waiters pour the remains through a sieve so that the left over oil collects in a steel container, then at night they remove the water from the oil. When they use this oil again they have to add large quantities of chillies so as to disguise the fact that the oil isn’t fresh. This is how ‘oil boiled fish’ has now become ‘saliva boiled fish’.

‘Cold Skin’ is a famous snack from Shanxi’s Guanzhong district. With the success of various Shanxi comedians, these snacks have become popular all over the country. But recently some terrible facts were found about some cold skin that was sold in Beijing: it was discovered that one illegal manufacturer made cold skin by kneading the dough with their feet, and adding urine and saliva to the mixture.

‘Cold Skin’ noodles are famous throughout the country, and women especially like to eat them in the summer. But on 18 June 2004, a 17-year-old worker in a cold skin factory in Chaoyang District told a reporter the disgusting way in which this snack was made. He said that they kneaded the dough as though they were washing some heavy coat, sometimes when they were too tired to mix it by hand they would get into the container and kneed the dough with their feet. If any dough dropped onto the dirty floor, they would just pick it up and fling it back into the container. They would never bother to clean any of the implements they used at the end of the day. After they went to the toilet, they would never wash their hands. Seeing this, the boss would just laugh and say, ‘Don’t let anyone else see you do that!’ On three or four occasions, when the workers had been sworn at by their boss or had had their pay reduced, they would even piss into the dough, and on one or two occasions the worker also saw an angry colleague spit into the container of boiling noodles. The young worker also said that there were more than ten other children working in the illegal factory with him. The boss had brought them over with him from Shanxi, the youngest was only 14 years old. They had no health certificates, and many of the children didn’t even have identity papers.

photo by atcy

The Duanwu Festival is traditionally a time when the Chinese public pay their respects to the concepts of compassion and justice. And the quality of some of bamboo rice parcels that are traditionally given as offerings to the ancient hero Qu Yuan, have recently also been the cause of great concern. For the illegal traders who lack any sense of morality, each new festival is just another chance to make money.

On the Duanwu festival of 11 June 2004, the Beijing departments of Town Management, Industry and Commerce, and Hygiene went to inspect an illegal factory in the Jinding Road area that was producing bamboo rice parcels. They confiscated five tonnes of parcels, and a batch of illegal ingredients, with a total value of 180,000 yuan. This illegal factory didn’t comply with any of the basic hygiene regulations, there was rubbish everywhere, the four workers working there had no health certificates or right to work. It was a completely illegal operation.

On the same day another discovery was made about tofu production. Since 1 July 2003, the production of tofu has been systemised, and the sale of unpackaged tofu has been banned. But in some suburban markets, some traders are still selling this unhygienic, unpackaged tofu. Usually this unpackaged tofu is sold directly to hotels, restaurants, companies and school cafeterias. Because it is cheap, and the rules against it are loosely implemented, this unpackaged tofu is still being bought and sold. This illegal tofu is now also being seen for sale in markets, although its sale there is more covert. This ‘black’ tofu is often sold at times when the inspectors are known not to visit, or sometimes the tofu is delivered straight to the customers’ homes.

According to one tofu manufacturer, they once followed an illegal tofu producer from his factory to the Baliqiao market, and saw that they had changed the 5am delivery time to 2 or 3am. Another person in the know told me that these factories had very low running costs – 2000 yuan at the most. The only equipment they would have would be an electric grinder, an old petrol barrel and a rubber tube.

First they pour the yellow beans into a cloth bag, without bothering to check for any grit or stones, then they dunk this bag into some water and start grinding the beans up. Then the mixture is rinsed in a sieve and pressed down for a couple of hours and that’s it. The man told me that this kind of tofu has a protein content of just 4%, whereas tofu produced by the legitimate factories have protein contents of 70 to 80%. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘these illegal traders aren’t selling tofu, they’re selling water!’

The Chinese have been eating tofu for thousands of years. Apparently there are many Chinese people living abroad who are trying to promote tofu as the healthiest food for the 21^st Century. But stories like these will inevitably damage the reputation of tofu abroad.

We are seeing more and more of these famous snacks being destroyed before our eyes: the Guanshengyuan mooncakes filled with rotten ingredients, the DDVP pork legs from Jinhua, the poisonous minced meat from Taiqiang, Pingyao’s toxic beef. Then there was all the news about pork contaminated with ‘lean pork powder’, and poisonous beansprouts. Guanghai salted fish is one of the most famous products to come from Taishan in Guangdong Province. Recently news broke out that the Guanghai salted fish was in fact preserved in DDVP. A reporter visited a salted fish factory in Wanglong village – where most of these factories are to be found – and was told by a worker there that the manufacturing process was very simple. First the fish was covered in salt, then cleaned, dried, packed in a box and sold. The most important step of this process was the washing of the fish. The reporter saw that when the fish was being washed, some liquid was added to the wooden vat, and as soon as it was added, white foam started to rise from the surface of the water. The worker explained that this was an agricultural chemical – DDVP – and it was used as an insecticide. The floor was covered with salt. The workers would walk back and forth across it. There were even droppings in it from the chickens that lived in the yard outside. Although it was produced in this shocking way, the salted fish sold very well. People would travel down from the North to buy it. Most of the customers came from Guangzhou, Jiangmen, Huidong, Huizhou, and some even came from Hunan and Guangxi.

In the past we used to say that ‘Food is the people’s God’, but now, following all these food scares, the people have lost all sense of trust in the food that they eat. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to talk about a ‘food hygiene fear’: rice is polished with metals, noodles are filled with additives, fruit are covered with chemicals that speed up the ripening process and increase their growth, and vegetables are covered with pesticides . . . Who can remain calm when faced with such a frightening situation?

Below is a selection of reports that have come out recently on the safety of our food.

On 5 July 2004, the China Youth Daily reported that a survey had discovered that 82% of the public are afraid about the safety of China’s food, and that 90% of people interviewed had encountered a problem with food safety. More than half of the people felt were afraid about the food that failed to meet the government standards, others were afraid about the fake food products and food sold beyond its sell-by date. This survey was carried out in May and June of this year in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

Poisonous lily stalks are now for sale in markets all over the country. On 13 March 2004, the Hygiene Inspection Team of Shenyang discovered 7 truck loads, a total of 24.5 tonnes, of lily stalks contaminated with levels of sulphur dioxide that were 200 times higher than those allowed. Then it was discovered that in the areas where most of the lilies are grown – Pingxing County in Henan and Dengdong County in Hunan, this 24.5 tonnes was just the tip of the iceberg. According to the Hygiene Office of Hengyang City, the 24.5 tonnes discovered in Shenyang came from Dengdong, but also Shanxi and Fujian, indicating that the addition of sulphur dioxide during the production of this product was common throughout the country. Yang Wu, president of Hunan’s Yang Wu Lily Stalk Company, told me that ‘There are more than two or three thousand tonnes of poisonous lily stalks produced this year.’

The toxicity of these lily stalks is caused by the additive ‘Jiaoya Powder’. 30% of this additive is sulphur dioxide. According to China’s 1992 ‘Safety standards for food additives’, it is illegal to add sulphur dioxide to lily stalks, whether it’s to act as a preservative or a whitening agent.

A food stall holder from Dengdong told me that in 1992, Pingxing County in Henan Province started cultivating lily stalks. They borrowed the production techniques from Dengdong, adding sulphur products during the processing. As soon as the lily stalks were picked, the farmers would tip them into large plastic bags, then add sulphur powder. Every 100 jin of stalks would have about 5-6 jin of sulphur powder. Working on the basis that 8 jin of fresh lily stalks produces about 1 jin of dried flowers, then every 25 jin of dried stalks would have about 1 jin of sulphur dioxide in them.

‘We are not eating lily stalks, we are eating sulphur dioxide!’ Li Yingwu said. This is only the first step. Sulphur products are added during the drying and other processes as well, so that by the time they reach the dinner plate, the stalks are bound have sulphur dioxide levels that are hundreds of times higher than those allowed.

According to the research, if people consume high levels of sulphur dioxide they will develop symptoms of poisoning – dizziness, nausea, diarrhoea, lethargy, stomach aches etc, and in the long term will suffer liver and kidney damage. Sulphur dioxide consumption can also lead to cancer. The presence of high levels of sulphur dioxide in lily stalks is a time bomb waiting to explode. But the farmers are unaware of this problem, and they themselves eat their crops every day.

Poets and philosophers in the West have used salt as a metaphor for love and friendship, and the Chinese have traditionally regarded salt as one of the seven things you must remember to buy when you go out shopping, but now salt is poisoning us too. In China, 403 people have been poisoned by the salt they have eaten, and two people have died. In this year’s warning issued by the Department of Hygiene, people were advised to buy salt only from reputable sources, and on no account buy milk on the black market.

‘Sulphur salt’ has additives added during processing to maintain the salt’s colour. This additive is very poisonous. If you consume three grams of it you will die. Serious poisoning leads to such symptoms as: headache, dizziness, chest aches, breathlessness, palpitations, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea etc. At higher levels, symptoms included loss of concentration, restlessness, loss of consciousness, breathing problems and even death.

A report from the Department of Hygiene also said that Wanjiadenghuo Restaurant in Puzhong, Shanxi Province poisoned 168 people, and that Chunfaengteng in Gan County, Shaanxi Province, illegally used sulphur salt, which poisoned 115 people. 117 people were poisoned by illegal stall holders using sulphur salt in Changchun, Jilin Province. In Xianning, Hubei Province, three people in one family were poisoned by consuming the salt, two of them died . . .

On 11 June 2004, the Beijing authorities warned the public not to eat raw salmon, so as to avoid listeria poisoning. At the same time, Beijing’s Department of Industry and Commerce warned people to eat only in moderation dried vegetables, fruit and nuts, as 87.1% of these products did not meet with the regulations regarding sulphur dioxide content. Again, on the same day, the Department of Industry and Commerce named 43 products that contained illegal amounts of additives. On 21 July, Beijing’s Office of Hygiene and Food issued a warning to the city’s residents not to eat sea snails. Because on 13 July Yinchuan city had discovered a serious case of toxic sea snails – 55 people were poisoned and one person died. The sea snails themselves weren’t toxic, it was the poisonous substances they had eaten that made them so lethal.

It is dangerous to eat vegetables in the summer. During the summer there are many insects on the vegetables, and farmers use more chemicals than at any other time to kill them off. The worrying thing is that these insects become resistant to the chemicals over time, and so as to kill them off, some farmers secretly use highly toxic pesticides and chemicals that the governments has forbidden to be used on vegetables. And few farmers wait the full 15 days after the application of pesticides before taking the vegetables to market. In the recent case of poisoned green vegetables in Wuzhou, Jiangxi Province, the farmer had taken the vegetables to market just five days after spraying them with pesticides.

There have been many other cases of serious poisoning of food products. At noon on 8 June 2004, 15 staff members of Beijing’s Yuxi Solar Energy Company were poisoned by unripe beans. On the same day, the canteen of the Luoyang Office in Beijing added 28 grams of sulphur salt to 18 jin of chicken, causing 16 people to be poisoned. And on 6 May, during a wedding feast in Dahe village, in Hunan Province, a hundred people fell sick. The County Department of Hygiene suspected that the problem was with the chicken legs that were served. On 19 May, more than 100 students of Changchun University fell sick after eating egg fried rice served in the canteen. The poisoning was caused by the addition of sulphur salt. On the 17 and 18 May, pupils at a primary school in Shicheng County, Henan Province, suffered from food poisoning, 47 of them were taken to hospital. The cause was found to be that the food was dirty and full of bacteria. On 18 July, 9 employees from a company in Beijing’s Chaoyang District ate at ‘Guandong Duyipin’ Restaurant, and ordered the restaurant’s speciality dish: tripe. After the meal, the 9 people felt nauseous and light-headed, and the hospital diagnosed that they had been poisoned by sulphur salt .

The author: Qing Zhou is a writer and folklorist. Born in 1965, Zhou has been a visiting scholar in the U.S. and Russia. His works include the 2006 Ulysses Prize-nominated “What Kind of God: A Survey of the Current Safety of China's Food (Reportage Literature, 2004).”

Homepage photo by nib!

China’s food fears (part two)

Qing Zhou — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:31:00 +0000

In the second part of his report into the food industry, Zhou Qing issues a stark warning to Chinese consumers and asks what steps can be taken to improve food safety.

In this superficial age of ours, a swathe of beauty parlours has opened to meet the cosmetic needs of the adult population. But few people know that while the artificially produced beautiful people walk down our streets, the food products in our markets are also undergoing cosmetic treatments.

Wenling City in Zhejiang Province is famous all over the country for its prawns. The prawns from that area are yellowy pink, and look delicious, but behind this delicious exterior lies a dark secret. A local manager involved in the prawn processing business told me that the processing treatment is quite simple.

First the prawns are cooked in boiling water, then they are dried and peeled. The most important step of this process is the cooking. The colour of the prawns depends on the length of cooking time, so it is important to get it right.

The secret, though, is to add some red powder to the cooking pot, and to keep adding it during the cooking process. The colour stays on the prawn after the drying process for two or three months. The prawn producers in the area all use this red powder. According to various investigations, this red powder is called ‘Liangcanghua Essence’, commonly known as ‘acid red 73’. It is mostly used as a wood dye, and is forbidden as a food additive because it can cause cancer.

Pinglu County in Shandong Province is famous for its fruit. A few illegal canning businesses buy cheap, unripe strawberries, peaches and apricots and put them into cans. Central Television Station’s ‘Weekly Quality Report’ showed how in Xinchao Canning Factory, the workers would pour onto strawberries chemicals to stop rotting and the growth of bacteria, then they would bottle the strawberries, and so as to make them look fresh, the workers would pour a red liquid into the bottles, a carmine colour, so that the green, unripe strawberries are transformed into red strawberries. And the method of turning white peaches into yellow canned peaches is even more horrifying. First the white peaches are put in a steel vat, and the skin is removed using industrial caustic soda, then they are soaked in lemon yellow and sunset yellow dyes and boiled, so that the white peaches turn a yellow colour. After that, sweeteners are added, the cans are labelled and sent off all over the country.

The beautiful cakes that are made for Chinese New Year always look appealing. But the beautiful exterior often hides dangerous, illegal contents. A New Year Cake shop in Shanghai’s Pudong District fumigates its cakes with a sulphur powder to preserve their shop life, whitens them with industrial bleach, and even uses cheap industrial sodium hydrosulphite to make the cakes look fresh. According to a worker in this shop, they were not the only company to use sulphur powder and sodium hydrosulphite, many other factories have used them for some time.

Recently the Nanjing hygiene quality inspectors have banned all products from the ‘Haibawangjia Tianxia’ Company, because it has been found that they have altered the dates of quick-freeze products that have passed their sell-by dates, and put them on the market again. It was found that this company would scrape off the old sell-by dates and replace them with new ones before trying to sell the products off again. For suspicious customers, there is now no difference between products that have no sell-by dates printed on them from those that do, as they can’t be sure that the sell-by dates have been tampered with. How can people eat these kinds of products with any peace of mind? And many supermarkets sell loose dumplings, mixing up the fresh ones with the out of date ones. The factories just put the old dumplings into new bags and send them off to the supermarkets to be sold, and no one is the wiser.

On 1 June, this kind of thing happened in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. Seeing that the date on the 30,000 bottles of soft drinks had nearly arrived, the unscrupulous manager of the ‘Ketaolu’ drink company decided to wipe the dates off using some kind of glue, then printed a new sell-by date that was a full thirteen months later than the old one.

Many customers wonder how it is that products that have passed their sell-by dates are not destroyed, but are instead returned to the manufacturer who then changes the dates and sells them again. Who is responsible for destroying products that have passed their sell-by dates? What have the relevant government bodies done about this situation?

There are many strange things that happen in food production. The Many Fresh Oranges drink processing company produces drinks that have no trace of real orange in them. What you find in the company’s factory is not oranges but nearly ten different kinds of sweeteners, flavourings additives and colourings. This was seen in April 2004 in their factory in Nanchang. The drink is just made from tap water and a great deal of additives that far exceed the maximum levels set by the government.

Even more worrying is the so-called ‘organic green tea’ that purports to be of no danger to public health, but that in fact contain high levels of pesticides. The Xuanlang Tea Company of Shizi, Anhui Province, cultivates 20,000 mu (540 square kilometres) of tea. It is supposed to be a model for organic farming in China. A reporter from CCTV visited several tea farms in the locality and found that many farmers who had contracted land in the area were in fact using phosphate fertilisers, Jiaji 1605 and other such toxic agricultural chemicals. In the tea factory, the reporter found that the workers were adding glutinous rice powder to the tea, so as to make the thick, fresh tea leaves curl up. In the Number 3 Jingzhi Tea Company of Xuanlang it was discovered that the rice mixture sprayed on the tea was black. This meant that even the ‘dregs’ of the tea could be sold for the same price as the proper tea.

There have been many suspicions about the dried milk pieces produced in China, with rumours that they contain no fresh milk. These rumours have damaged the domestic dairy industry. There has been a recent loss of trust in the safety of milk pieces. Many supermarkets have taken the product off their shelves or have demanded to see authenticity documents from the manufacturers. All milk pieces have been removed from the shops in Chongqing, and in Guangzhou, the customers have demanded refunds for the milk pieces that they have bought.

Recently, Beijing’s Quality Inspection Department made an investigation into meat products and canned foods, and found that only 75% of the meat products met with the safety regulations. The main problem with the meat products was that they used high levels of benzoic acid. Half of the canned food didn’t meet with the regulations. Only 66.7% of tinned tomatoes met with the regulations. The largest problem here was the quality of the ingredients and the high levels of additives. On 6 August, the department announced the results of an investigation it made into drinks that use carbonic acid. It looked into 30 drinks produces by 29 Beijing companies, and found only 18 met with the regulations - that is a failure rate of 69%. During the investigation it was discovered that the levels of saccharomycete and sulphur dioxide were too high.

Jiangsu Province has recently investigated 543 cake manufacturers, and found that of 113 cakes tested, only 65 met with the regulations, which is a pass rate of just 57.5%. After that the Jiangsu Hygiene Department warned customers to take care when buying unpackaged food products.

In Hunan, there is a tradition of pickling vegetables in earthenware pots. There is a fish head dish cooked with these pickles that is particularly famous in this region. But a quality inspection team in Hunan’s Qiuyang City found in the Xiangbei Market, a factory whose 60 square metres of floor space was covered with more than 80 black plastic bags, and that in the salty water in which the vegetables were being pickled were floating dead black and white cockroach-like insects.

An inspection team of Beijing’s Haidian District investigated a private supplier of dried radishes, and found that 25 tonnes, or more than 1300 boxes, of ‘Qianjiang’ dried radishes that were headed for Beijing’s expensive hotels had levels of formic acid that were 5 to 7 times higher than those allowed.

On 11 April, the National Quality Inspection Department announced that they had found four products that contained illegal quantities of brightening agents. These were: ‘Qinlaoda’ flour produced by Xian’s Qinlaoda Food Company; ‘Meidian’ noodles produced by Shanghai’s Meidian Company; ‘Fengtao’ flour and ‘Fengtao’ noodles produced by Nanjing’s Chuangxin Food Company. They also announced that a survey into white and brown sugar in 2004 found serious problems with the white sugar produced by Haikou’s Jingshan Sugar Company, Yunnan’s Fulong Sugar Company, Yunnan’s Xingfu Sugar Company, and Yunnan’s Bafang Sugar Company. The main causes for concern were the high levels of sulphur dioxide residues, insufficient levels of sucrose, high quantities of dirt and grit, and unsatisfactory labelling.

While I was carrying out some research into ‘Lean Meat Powder’ in Jiangxi Province, I travelled around for a while and found that in Nancheng City there were some serious problems with food safety. Below are some of the reports I collected from local newspapers.

On 18 May, Nancheng Evening Standard reported that the Nancheng bakeries often alter the sell-by dates of the breads they sell. They make biscuits out of bread that is about to go mouldy, and they take the crust off the mooncakes sold at the Mid-Autumn festival and use the stuffing again, spreading the stuffing onto bread rolls, making a cheap fruit bread. And in the markets of Nancheng, you can now find poor quality pale sesame seeds that have been dyed using industrial dyes and sold as high quality black sesame seeds.

On 9 July 2004, the Jiangnan Daily reported that the Jiujiang City’s quality inspection team, in just two months, found four companies that were manufacturing fake, substandard products: fake coca cola and orange drinks made with caramel colourings and flavourings; bean products made with left-over oil bought from restaurants; the presence of benzoic acids on green vegetables; pickled vegetables containing high levels of sulphur products and covered with mould. On the same day, the team closed down two illegal enterprises: one that put fake ‘Hong Kong Tianyu Soy Sauce’ into old bottles. The team confiscated 120 cases, containing more than 1440 bottles. They also confiscated 60 barrels of tap water that was labelled ‘Beijing Teli Pure Water’ that were stored in a dark lavatory.

On 16 July the Nancheng Evening Standard reported that a woman trader in the Nancheng market, was selling off the ‘yellow meat’ of sick pigs as ‘pork’, using fake documents. This meat is not for human consumption. If it is eaten people will suffer from diarrhoea and nausea.

On 27 July, the Nanchang Daily reported that ‘rubbish meat’ was being sold in 20 markets in Nancheng. The pigs’ mammary glands, lymph nodes and various other dirty ‘off cuts’ are sold in the main to small restaurants, pork fat businesses, or to manufacturers of dumplings who mix this bad meat with the better meat to make their stuffings.

In July the Jiangxi Province quality inspection team carried out some tests on vegetable oil, soy sauce and cold drinks sold in the province. 88.7% of the vegetable oils met with regulations, 60% of peanut oil met with regulations, the most serious problem with these oils were the high levels of residues of solvents present; butter was found to be too sour in many cases, and to have high levels of mould. Only 64% of soy sauces met with regulations, and the problems with these were low levels of amino acids and proteins and incorrect levels of ammonium salt. 20% of cold drinks didn’t meet with regulations. Only 63.6% of iced lollies met with regulations, and the problems with these were the fact that the protein quality and fat content didn’t comply with regulations, and that the labels were not up to standard.

The most serious problem was found with the stewed food products produced by the ‘Huangshanghuang’ company of Gongqing, Jiangxi Province, which caused large scale food poisonings in Nancheng and Fengcheng, leading to the hospitalisation of one hundred people. This greatly damaged the reputation of this company in the area, and the relevant branches of this company were closed by the authorities.

After the poisonings of 22 June, the Nancheng authorities investigated the case and were able to announce to the public the real cause. A branch of Huangzhanghuang had ordered too many ingredients during the Duanwu Festival, and because they didn’t employ adequate anti-bacterial measures, staphylococcus spread to toxic levels.

Every Sunday at 12:30, CCTV broadcasts ‘Weekly Quality Report’, and this has already become one of the station’s most popular shows. The reason for its increasing popularity is the fact that it regularly reports on the problem of the safety of food. Many viewers tune in especially to learn about cases that no one could dare imagine were true. For example, using highly carcinogenic alum on pumpkin seeds meant for human consumption; the ‘beautification’ of fruit; adding chemical fertilisers to rice noodles etc. The beginning of the show starts with the words, ‘You won’t believe anything you see, but we will do everything we can to get the proof that you need.’ Each case that they expose is astonishing and disturbing.

But while exposing these dark secrets, CCTV provides detailed information on how the criminals operate. So, in a situation where the governments’ laws have limited power to deal with these criminals, are these television programmes actually giving people the information they need to be able to copy these crimes?

And another worry is, just how far can ‘Weekly Quality Report’ go? What kind of pressure will it receive in the future? It is clear that since the programme broadcast on 4 July, the well-known show ‘Interviews on Important Matters’ has produced fewer exposés. But what kind of pressure has ‘Weekly Quality Report’ faced? Who has been trying to control the programme? I hope this is just paranoid speculation.

‘Migrant workers’ rice’, which contains the highly carcinogenic ‘huangqu’ toxin, is mainly eaten by the peasant migrants working in the cities and large institutions like schools that buy food in large quantities. These toxins can stay in the body for 15 to 20 years. This food can cause problems that in the future will lead to social unrest.

The migrant workers are already at the bottom of the social ladder, working for pitiful pay. On top of this, it has now been revealed that their bosses, in an attempt to save money, feed them with cheap rice containing the carcinogenic ‘huangqu’ toxin. Recently this cheap ‘migrant workers’ rice’ has been found in markets in ten provinces and cities, including Hebei, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Tianjin. Four reporters from CCTV’s ‘Time Line’ programme went to markets in Langfang, Hebei Province, Harbin in Heilongjiang Province, as well as in Beijing and Tianjin to look into this situation.

The reporters found that this unsafe, stale rice was openly on sale even in Beijing and Tianjin. In Langfang’s agricultural products market, half the rice stalls were selling this ‘migrant workers’ rice’, but most of it was hidden in a back room. Compared to other rice, the migrant workers’ rice was yellow and smelt a little mouldy. Someone in the know told me that this migrant workers’ rice has always been for sale, and is in the main sold to construction companies, it is just that this year it has sold in larger quantities than before. A 46 jin bag of migrant workers’ rice sells for just 48 yuan (US$6). A rice seller will only make about 1 yuan (US$0.13) on each bag of normal rice sold, but although this migrant workers’ rice is a third of the price of normal rice, the rice seller can make at least 7 or 8 yuan a bag on it.

Since it is already well known that most of this rice is sold to construction sites, the canteens on construction sites have found ways of trying to disguise the rice they use. They soak the rice and rub it, which gets rid of the yellow colour and removes a lot of the smell of mould, so that the grains of rice look big and white. The television reporter secretly interviewed one stall holder who said that he buys batches of 400 bags, and sells them very quickly. Another stall holder was able to sell 4 to 5,000 jin of this rice a day.

A reporter secretly interviewed a boss of a construction site, who said that there were 300 migrant workers working on his site. Since he had started buying ‘migrant workers’ rice’ his costs had been cut a lot, in fact he was able to make total savings of about 5000 yuan (US$630) a month.

According to the journal, ‘China Quality: 10,000 miles’, it’s not only Hebei and Helongjiang where this problem is serious, the cities of Beijing and Tianjin also sell this rice in large quantities. Stale rice has been found in many large agricultural products markets in Beijing. The reporter saw 100 tones of this stale rice for sale in Beijing’s Liulitun market. One stallholder there said that he sold 30 tonnes a month. On this basis, the migrant workers in Beijing must consume more than 10,000 tonnes of stale rice a year.

Stale rice is not fit for human consumption. It can only be sold on auction, to businesses that have special authorisation to make fermented drinks. Hu Xiaosong, the Deputy Head of China’s Agricultural University said, ‘The huangqu toxin is about ten times more poisonous than the qinghua toxin. Once it enters the body, it causes serious damage to the liver, and can lead to liver cancer. According to research, cancer can develop just 24 weeks after consuming this toxin, it is the most highly carcinogenic toxin found to date. And this is what the migrant workers are eating every day.

This stale rice isn’t only eaten by migrant workers, it’s also served at universities and work cafeterias, and sold to some food manufacturers. The reporters also looked into where this stale rice was coming from, and found that most of it came from the Northeast – in particular Liaodong in Liaoning Province and Wuchang in Heilongjiang Province. And Beijing has its own migrant workers’ rice. Some of it comes from state-owned rice storehouses, and some from stale rice auctioneers. This stale rice not only an issue of food safety, it is an issue that reveals the true nature of our morality and political system.

Recently CCTV ‘Weekly Quality Report’ has revealed that in Bengbu in Anhui Province, fruit jelly factories use edible gum instead of fresh fruit to produce cheap fruit jellies. As well as gum, they add a variety of different additives that are strictly forbidden by the government, preservatives, brightening agents, saccharine, colourings, and flavourings. Their equipment is very basic, and their hygiene levels are far below the standard. Bengbo is Anhui’s main producer of fruit jellies, there are about 100 different factories making them there, and the area has become famous for producing cheap jellies. There are nearly 50 different brands of fruit jelly produced in the city, and they sell for about 1.5 yuan a jin, or as little as 0.7 yuan a jin. The ingredients for good quality fruit jelly cost at least 0.6 yuan a jin. The local bosses said that the fruit jelly is made with artificial fruit. This so-called artificial fruit is not treated in any way, but put straight into the jelly pots. The boss told the reporter, ‘In Bengbo, the price of the fruit jelly just about covers the cost of the plastic packaging. It’s very low. We only make a few cents a crate, so we have to rely on selling large quantities of the product.’

When one looks back at all the food scandals that have occurred in recent years, we can’t help repeating the mantra that the Japanese ‘devils’ muttered in the old films: ‘All conscience is destroyed!’ But we can’t allow ourselves to forget all the terrible things that have happened. These food products are bought with the hard-earned cash of our people, and the price they have to pay is their lives, which they can only live once. We can’t just sit back passively and allow these things to happen. In 1987, during the outbreak of Hepatitis A in Shanghai, you could sell a bottle of Banlangen medicine [used to treat symptoms of Hepatitis] for the price of a much sought after television set. And ten years later in Guangzhou when SARS broke out, a bottle of vinegar [thought to help kill the virus] could sell for as much as 200 yuan! This is not fantasy, this is really the world we are living in. One can’t help remembering what Julius Fučík said: ‘Man – remain vigilant!’

The author: Qing Zhou is a writer and folklorist. Born in 1965, Zhou has been a visiting scholar in the U.S. and Russia. His works include “What Kind of God: A Survey of the Current Safety of China's Food (Reportage Literature, 2004).”