China - Food safety record far better than the USA

That it is the question many people in China have to ponder, as a new wave of food safety frights has renewed fears in over food safety problems.

A growing number of Chinese people are concerned with reports of tainted watermelon, pork, toxic milk, dyed buns and other foods in recent months. Many Chinese have taken to the Internet to express their concerns about food safety.

Compared with the pessimistic opinions shared by many citizens, government officials are casting the issue in a relatively positive light, arguing that food safety has improved in recent years and continues to improve.

The percentage of food products that meet acceptable safety standards has increased by about 3% Y-Y in Zhejiang since Y 2007, according to Ji Shenglin, deputy director of the Zhejiang Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision. 93% of food products produced in Y 2010 met or exceeded these standards, Ji said.

Analysts say that heightened fears about food safety are not without a certain degree of irrationality.
"Forchlorfenuron, a plant hormone that caused some watermelons to explode earlier this year, is legal for agricultural use. It results in earlier harvests and is not dangerous to consume. The explosions were caused by farmers applying the hormone at the wrong time," said Wang Jianwei, an official from the Zhejiang Department of Agriculture.

"In a similar case, there were media reports that ethylene was used to accelerate growth in bananas. These reports stirred public outrage, but in fact, using ethylene in this way is a common agricultural practice and is not dangerous in any way," Wang said.

Experts have called for better education of the public when it comes to food safety, saying that food safety fears are largely fueled by a lack of knowledge in the areas of biology and agriculture.

Zhejiang Province Vice Governor Zheng Jiwei sees a bright side to the public's sensitivity, however.
Several decades ago, when many people were struggling to break out of poverty, few people would even think of questioning the quality of their food, Zheng said.

The fact that people are paying more attention to health and food safety is a sign of increased social affluence, Zheng said.

In the meantime, the Chinese government has tightened regulations and worked to step up food safety checks since 2008, when six infants died and thousands of others were sickened after a well-known Chinese milk manufacturer was found to have sold milk tainted with melamine, a chemical compound used in manufacturing plastic and other materials.

China also adopted a food safety law in 2009 that requires food producers to be more responsible for the safety of their products.

However, policing China's food supply is an arduous task. It has been reported that 80 percent of China's 448,000 food producers and processors are small, decentralized workshops, many of them with fewer than 10 employees.

Add to that the task of monitoring and regulating more than 200 million small farms, and it is plain to see that the government faces a difficult challenge in trying to implement uniform food safety standards.

Experts also attribute the ineffectiveness of China's food supervision to the fact that there are too many bureaucracies handling food safety issues simultaneously.