Chinese FDA

When I was in high school I took a college level English class where we read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. This novel revolutionized America as it became apparent the food and working conditions were incredibly unsafe to the general public. This book eventually caused the FDA to be founded. I had the idea that this kind of idea would be worldwide and of course, I was wrong. 


China does have an FDA of sorts which started in 1998, almost 92 years after America, and has been renamed multiple times. As of this publishing it is called the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). I have not been too impressed with their work. 

Baby Formula

Chinese people have refused to buy Chinese made baby formula and will buy foreign brands instead and choosing to pay the heftier bill. The reason is that in 2008 the milk formula was found to have melamine in it which caused kidney stones and even death (Pak, 2018).

Then in 2010 it was found that Chinese baby formula was causing early puberty. 
In 2018 thousands of baby formula containers was recalled after it was found to have salmonella (France-Presse, 2017).

Most Chinese choose to go to Australia to buy formula. What happened next was that Chinese citizens flew to Australia and bought every last can of formula which lead to regulations on how much you could buy and take overseas (Vincent, 2018).

Vaccines

There is controversy in the USA right now about vaccines but it is over the fact that people are choosing not to take them. In China, the problem is that people want the vaccines but can't trust what is in them. 

250,000 vaccines which were for whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus were found not to be up to health and safety standards and made many people who got the vaccines to wonder what was injected in them. There haven't been any reports that the faulty vaccines caused harm unlike the milk formula crisis but it did cause serious damage to the relationship of the Chinese people and their trust in the government. America also had a trust issue with Chinese medicine as they recalled heart medication made in China just in case that too was faulty (Hernandez, 2018). 
The rabies vaccine was found not to live up the health and safety standards. It was found that the same vaccine health company that had the 250,000 faulty vaccines also faked their records to show that they had safety check-ups and their facilities were inspected thoroughly. All the rabies vaccines were recalled but left many families scrambling. One woman wrote on her social media, "My baby received the rabies vaccine in March. I only took one picture, and I didn't take down the complete batch number. I'm so panicked now! What should I do?"  (Pan & Walsh, 2018)

Meat Safety
In 2018 the trade war with America and China really began and because of that China wasn't buying American pork anymore. Chinese thought , "Well we will just buy Chinese pork," but just then a deadly pig flu came to China. 

African Swine Flu causes pigs to miscarry, have blue or red skin, and have high fevers (Ma, 2019). The flu can't affect humans, however, I make sure to avoid Chinese pork when I can, and when I can't, I cook it at home and make sure it is heated to the safety standard. Due to the swine flu about 1 million pigs have been culled and even with the government asking farmers to be safe in the way they dispose bodies to prevent the disease from spreading, farmers continue to dump diseased deceased pigs in rivers and ditches (Ma, 2019). The government is now requiring slaughterhouses, cold storage businesses, and warehouses to test for the disease (Patton, 2019). I was surprised that they weren't already testing for diseases before. People still want pork which means that the Chinese are buying frozen pork from overseas as it was found in frozen pork facilities in China that those meats were contaminated with the flu (Patton, 2019). The hygiene of meat in China has also caused countries such as the USA, Japan, and the European Union to make stricter laws about what meat is allowed in their countries. China had an outbreak of various animal illness like avian flu, pig strep, and foot and mouth disease which caused many countries to ban Chinese meat until the diseases were under control. It was found that many small town farms were unaware of how to prevent these diseases in their livestock back in the early 2000s. China is one of the largest producers of red meat in the world, but with every epidemic they take a hit to their economy abroad and at home (Worldwatch Institute, n.d.). 

Fake Food
When I first came to China I noticed that the labeling of food here is completely different. Not all the ingredients are listed on food items, if they are even listed at all. I remember my college campus started having signs about what was in their foods and most restaurants have disclaimers about allergies and meats. You can guess, China most definitely does not and con-artists take advantage of this.

According to Export.gov China, the labeling of food didn't start until 2011 and the most recent passing of government required labeling of food came in 2015 and it is only for pre-packaged food. In 2016, the Chinese government required labels for baby formula. Imported and exported food have to have labels but anything domestic doesn't require a label for items such as canned foods, wine, nuts, or cheese (Export.Gov, 2017). 
My co-workers have bought food online here that I kid you not, the food had mud or plastic in them. In my own personal experience I have found the "do not eat packet" in trail mix and bags of chips. How is that allowed? (Side note: they are safe to eat but can be a choking hazard.)

Image from phronk.com

A study from Palgrave Communications, analyzed food safety data in a 10 year period in Beijing, China and found 99% of the food safety problems were caused by human error. It was found that these food safety incidents would not be randomly throughout the year but typically happen all at once and around the same issue. If one company committed fraud about food safety and weren't caught, other companies would copy the scheme and then an epidemic would occur. China is behind on food testing safety, food perseverance science, and food producers knowledge of food safety is severely lacking (Gao, Liu, Liu, & Zhang, 2015). 
In a 2011 study, food safety was ranked number one of concerns for Chinese citizens which outranked traffic, medical, and public security concerns. There were 174 reported cases of toxic food caused by animal and plant toxins in 2012. Illegal additives were another cause of food safety issues in China (Li, Song, & Zhang, 2014). 
There have been quite a few fake food scandals that have come out of China in the past 20 years that cause public health scares. Food appeared to be normal until they were cooked, opened, or even bit into. There were food vendors selling rice that had plastic bits in them discovered after cooking the rice and finding that the grains were still hard. There were reports of concrete filled walnut shells, calcium chloride eggs, and fake grapes were being sold (Damarla, 2014). 
There was meat being sold as mutton only to be found to be made of meat from rats, minks, and foxes. There was a tofu scandal that found the offending dish was made out of soy-milk and several gel-creating chemicals and on top of that the tools used to mix the ingredients were unwashed. Formaldehyde and an inedible dye were found in traditional Chinese duck blood tofu. Rice noodles were found to have added bleach in them to make them look fresh and were also made out of moldy rice grains. Counterfeiters were discovered taking discarded wine bottles to be filled up and sold as the real thing to unsuspecting consumers which is now the reason most Chinese restaurants and hotels will break bottles apart when they are empty. The list goes on and on (Anderson, 2015). 


The Punishments for these Offenders? 
The company that had fake vaccines in the end was charged a $680,000 fine and there were 200 arrests. Some say it wasn't harsh enough as the vaccine company made about $113 million dollars in 2017 (Pan & Walsh, 2018). 
The government announced in 2011 that those who cause food to be lethal will be given the death sentence. Those convicted of not following food safety standards and if any government official is found to have taken a bribe from these food agencies will be given harsher prison sentences. Those in charge of the formula milk scandal were given life sentences (Jiang, 2011). 
After the fake egg scandal, government officials again promised harsher punishments for criminals. There was also a stricter set of rules for food chains to follow food safety laws in 2014 when it was discovered that employees at McDonald's were found to change the expiry date of food labels (Reuters, 2014).

It may be no surprise to some reading this that the government is less concerned about punishing these offenders than they are covering them up. A food safety law in 2013 originally stated that any food safety concerns should be censored before it goes public, it should be said that this was taken out in 2014(Gao, Liu, Liu, & Zhang, 2015). Although, it is easy to believe that the government here would be more likely to cover up their mistakes than make another world wide scandal. 

I will end this saying that I know that China is still considered a developing country and due to that, it is going to have problems. It is a sad reality that Chinese people live in fear of food, baby formula, and vaccines because they could be fake or even toxic. If someone wanted to write their own Chinese version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle they would have a hard time getting around the censors. I truly did not understand how privileged I was in the USA until coming here and I hope you express gratitude for the FDA as well. 

Image courtesy of ushistory.org

Sources

Anderson, E. S. (2015, March 15). 10 Bizarre Food Scams That Could Only Happen in China. Retrieved from List Verse: https://listverse.com/2015/03/15/10-bizarre-food-scams-that-could-only-happen-in-china/

Damarla, P. (2014). Fake, Plastic Rice in China: Facts. Retrieved from Hoax or Fact: http://www.hoaxorfact.com/health/fake-plastic-rice-in-china-facts.html

Eurobiz Online. (2018, August 6). Food Safety and Traceability in China. Retrieved from Eurobiz Online: https://www.eurobiz.com.cn/food-safety-and-traceability-in-china/

Export.Gov. (2017, July 25). China-Labeling. Retrieved from Export.Gov: https://www.export.gov/article?id=China-Labeling-Marking-Requirements

France-Presse, A. (2017, December 11). UK and China Part of Worldwide Recall of Lactalis Baby Formula over Salmonella Fears. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/11/uk-china-worldwide-recall-lactalis-baby-forumla-milk-salmonella-fears-children

Gao, J., Liu, F., Liu, Y., & Zhang, J. (2015). Food Safety Incidents in Beijing: Occurrence Patterns, Causes and Wider Social Implications. Palgrave Communications, Article Number 15029.

Hernandez, J. C. (2018, July 23). In China, Vaccine Scandal Infuriates Parents and Tests Government. The New York Times, p. A5.

Jiang, S. (2011, May 30). China: Food Safety Violators to Face Death Penalty. Retrieved from CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/30/china.food.violations/index.html

Li, X., Song, Y., & Zhang, L. (2014). Food Safety Issues in China. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 1299-1300.

Ma, A. (2019, March 15). China is Killing a Third of Its Pigs Because of a Gruesome and Incurable Fever, Which Could Drive Up the Price of Pork Around the World. Retrieved from Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-culls-pigs-over-african-swine-fever-global-pork-prices-to-rise-2019-5

Pak, J. (2018, October 24). Foreign Infant Milk Formula Still Highly Coveted in China 10 years After the Melamine Scandal. Retrieved from Market Place: https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/24/world/foreign-infant-milk-formula-still-highly-coveted-china-10-years-after-melamine/

Pan, N., & Walsh, M. (2018, July 24). Chinese Rabies Vaccine Scandal Sparks Outrage Among Authorities and Public. Retrieved from ABC: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-23/chinese-vaccine-scandal-sparks-outrage/10025352

Patton, D. (2019, May 15). Slaughterhouse Rules Put Brakes on China Pork Prices. Retrieved from Business Day: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/asia/2019-05-15-slaughterhouse-rules-put-brakes-on-china-pork-prices/

Reuters, T. (2014, September 27). China Pledges "Harshest Penalties" for Food-Safety Violations. Retrieved from NDTV Food: https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/china-pledges-harshest-penalties-for-food-safety-violations-696148

Vincent, M. (2018, April 26). Australia's Chinese Peronal Shoppers About More Than Baby Formula-It's a $1Billion Industry. Retrieved from ABC: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/daigou-chinese-personal-shopping-$1-billion-industry/9671012

Worldwatch Institute. (n.d.). China Embraces Meat Safety Legislation. Retrieved from http://worldwatch.org/china-embraces-meat-safety-legislation

If you made it to the bottom I hope you learned something from my own self-assigned report!

High five for you for getting this far.