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The Recipe of China’s Food Safety Crisis




In the past, my impression of Chinese enterprises was in copyright fraud, counterfeit brands, later spreading to other areas like toxic toys. The food industry now faces its own serious problem. 

Food fraud, like other fraud, plays a harmful role, because it directly threatens the health and safety of consumers. Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan attended the two sessions (the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) in 2011, stating that he felt shameful there have been food safety issues. 

So the tragedy continues to unfold. The public is so angry with denunciation and condemnation, but can do little to stop the recklessness of the fraudsters. 

Behind the crisis, I believe, hides a lack of rule of law and a crisis of faith. 

From an economic point of view, food counterfeiters have individual rationalization, if the illegal gains exceed the costs, it will be worth it. Law depends on cost and the probability of investigation and punishment (including fines and criminal penalties). It should be said that there are enough laws, rules and regulations on food safety, and the key is the implementation. 

In law enforcement, two points are worth noting: 


Secondly the issue of symbolic punishment needs addressing Food Safety Law stipulates that compensation should be offered up to a maximum of ten times the value of the food. This will have little effect on profit-driven businesses. 

Only when citizens can get huge compensation through legal action will the food safety system really affect the behavior of enterprises. 

Every day there seems to be another scandal. The department responsible for quality inspection is either in serious dereliction of their duty and should be severely punished, or has colluded with the counterfeiters allowing this fraud to exist for a long time. 

Improving law enforcement effectiveness on food safety must be a multi-pronged approach: First, regulators must dare to expose the ugly. Second, the offender must not be tolerated, not just by punishing the individual offender, to avoid selective enforcement. The media should be given more freedom to act in timely and effective manner monitoring fraud. Finally, law enforcement must crack down on collusion. 

As food safety affects the interests of each person, and may even threaten social stability, it should arouse the attention of the government. The problem that exists for ordinary people is simply: what can we safely eat today?


Huang Shuo’s “The Recipe of China’s Food Safety Crisis” was first published May 10, 2011 in People’s Daily Online. 

© Food Safety News
  • dangermaus

    It still blows my mind that we import food from China… Despite the low of quality and publicized (probably over-publicized) risk, distributors still want to ship or fly food over here from China, and people buy it. Maybe what we need is MORE melamine in our imported, processed foods to wake people up about the fact that what they eat has consequences (sarcasm, obviously). Neither Marler Clark nor the FDA are never going to protect people from things like this. Nor can we trust the people who sell us the vast majority of our food to look out for us… To survive in the shark tank that is modern industrial food machine, management can’t care about things like whether their stated goals (like, “don’t poison our customers”) actually get implemented.
    Start buying as much of your food locally as you reasonably can…