Be very careful of what you eat in and from China.

Rogue merchants are making fast bucks manufacturing poisonous foodstuff and in the process, causing many to be ill or even die. From bleached rice, fake milk powders, soy sauce blended from waste human hair and now copycat instant noodles manufactured from fats of diseased pigs, substandard flour and recycled oil.

Food poisoning and contamination is bombarding consumers in every possible way in China, from pesticide residue to tampering to mislabeling to unsanitary handling to knock-off food brands. These trends continued each year, despite the consternation of the Chinese government and repeated vows to boost government regulations.

Read more here and here.

While the authorities have been intensifying regulations on food safety, these incidents continue.

We as consumers sometimes feel at our wits’ end in terms of what to eat and what not.

We do not lack rules to regulate our food chain. We do not lack the people to execute those rules. We do not lack the technical means to tell the safe from the unsafe. We have heard enough about the determination to put things in order.

But we keep receiving bad news involving the things we eat.

Extract from an article from china.org.cn.

According to what I’ve read, there are five major food safety problems in China:

Contamination occurs during the cultivation process. It is very difficult to supervise and control the manufacturing process of agriculture products produced by individual farmers; prohibited products and processes are widely used.

Food-processing factories are problematic sources of contamination. Most such factories are small, isolated and unorganized. Most factories are not properly equipped to produce quality foodstuffs.

Food distribution is not well organized. Chinese food management enterprises lack needed facilities and food distribution is managed with out-of-date methods.

Food safety protection is relatively weak in the countryside. Criminals sell impure and bad foods at country fairs and in small shops. During the Fuyang milk powder incident, farmers’ rights and interests were seriously and directly harmed.

Food safety problems have brought a bad reputation to Chinese foods in the international market with some countries exerting restrictions on the import of Chinese foods.

*Sigh* The spoils of capitalism in a communist state.