Chinese consumers of food have had plenty of reasons to reach for the sick bucket in recent years, but disgusting examples of food safety transgressions keep coming.
This week global media outlets picked up on revelations of 40-year old frozen beef resold to consumers by traders in China, where prices and sales of red meat and expensive seafood are both climbing. But there was also the revelation on Chinese TV of dead crabs and crawfish being sold to restaurateurs and hotels from one of the country’s leading seafood markets.
Vendors operating out of the Mawangdui Seafood Market in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, were filmed by undercover journalists from the Economic News TV channel handling large bags of dead, unchilled crabs which were also filmed being delivered to restaurants in the city. The state-controlled TV station took the footage to management of the Mawangdui market as well as the State Food & Drug Administration which is currently investigating the case. Hunan is increasingly a base for the freshwater aquaculture industry with crabs and crayfish sold live to retailers and food outlets nationwide.
Cases like this are unfortunately common. SeafoodSource has reported on shrimp wholesalers in Tianjin brushing their product with gelatin to give it a fresher look. And we’ve pointed to the questionable but ongoing practices of tilapia processors seeking to add weight to their filets and their margins by adding phosphate glazing and water.
And yet China has been readying what it’s calling its toughest ever Food Safety Law, to be enforced from 1 October. In part an effort to regain local consumers’ trust in domestic food products to allow these brands to recapture some of the sales which have gone to foreign brands and suppliers, the law will give regulatory bodies more powers and increase the penalties for transgressors. It will also make online commerce companies ultimately responsible for false advertising or poor quality goods sold by vendors on their sites.
But it’s hard to see how even the new law can prevent the kind of transgression that happened at the Mawangdui market. There have been many promises before, including a wireless-based food tracking system for the entire country which was to be implemented by 2015. And yes, retailers – particularly large multinationals like WalMart – have in fact done much to improve traceability through the use of barcodes.
But a great deal of China’s seafood sales happen through large wet markets, particularly in smaller cities. Urbanization, higher wages and the spread of refrigeration have all contributed to the increasing popularity of frozen and packaged seafood sales in supermarkets. Yet there is still a vast sector of wet markets where vendors are not required – and are often not willing – to supply even the most basic of details about the provenance of their stock.
Another reason why any new food safety law will be slow in taking effect is the inter-agency competition and duplication of roles which often means that enforcement of the law falls between two stools. In particular, the AQSIQ and SFDA have long been trampling on each other’s toes with the former seemingly the key body charged with improving quality and safety in the seafood sector.
China’s regulators have appeared particularly fast to act in the case of apparent transgressions by western retailers and brands in China. It might be an effort to regain local consumers’ trust in domestic food products. But cases like the Mawangdui market indicate something far more rotten in the system which a new food safety law won’t necessarily fix.
