The arrests last week, however, are just another in a long line of appalling lapses in food & health safety in the People’s Republic of China.
Perhaps the most infamous of the scandals came in 2008, when huge amounts of infant and milk formula became contaminated with dangerous levels of melamine. Chinese Ministry of Health officials estimated there were approximately 290,000 victims (with three officially acknowledged deaths), with over 50,000 children hospitalised as a result. These figures were potentially even underreported by the notoriously secretive authorities.
A similar dairy scandal in 2011 led to China announcing the closure of half their dairies to try and confront the contamination problems.
Another 2008 scandal saw several Japanese people falling ill after eating Chinese-produced pork dumplings that were contaminated by an insecticide. The incident and subsequent investigations were complicated by the oftentimes frayed relationship between the two countries. Insecticide and pesticide contamination have been the source of countless controversies within China itself as well.
In 2010, there was outrage when a study by Wuhan Polytechnic University discovered many meals in Chinese restaurants were cooked using ‘recycled’ cooking oils – often recovered from drains and sewers.
Other controversies
Other scandals include outbreaks of food poisoning caused by toxic mushrooms, sewage added to the popular ‘stinky tofu’ dish and plastics or formaldehyde added to various other food & drink products. In 2006, a number of diners contracted a type of meningitis after being served raw Amazonian snail meat.
The latest scandal isn’t the only example of illegal meat substitution. In 2007, an undercover Beijing television investigation alleged that dumpling dealers were adding cardboard to their product. In another case of lamb meat substitution, duck meat was ‘marinated’ in sheep urine and passed off as lamb.
Although the rat meat scandal shows that there are still massive problems in the Chinese food production industry, the communist government have announced a new General Food and Drug Administration to try and tackle the deep-rooted flaws in the system, as well as a general promise to address the country’s major agricultural problems.
