Crickets

Whether we have street protests in Korea or not is not really the main issue here, for poor monitoring capacity, a lack of consumer protection watchdogs, and strong regional government protectionism have long been the causes of poor regulation of safety in the Chinese food industry. Increasing safety problems with food exports, from bans by the European Union (EU) and Japan to the pet food scare in the United States, together with the recent dairy additive problem, have brought the global spotlight to bear on these deficiencies and catalyzing crackdowns and new laws within China.

Few people realize that despite having the largest (Do we count India as larger yet?) population, China is one of the globe’s leading exporters of food products, and its total food exports reached $246.35 billion in 2005, nearly 8 times the $31.29 billion it exported in 1980. And an increasing percentage of these exports is made up of food preservatives or ingredients (ie, wheat gluten, lactic acid, ascorbic acid), with the United States a significant market. In 2000, 82,000 shipments of food products and ingredients were exported to the United States from China, climbing to 199,000 shipments in 2006. U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials estimate such food shipments from China reached 300,000 in 2007. The US receives twice as many food shipments from China than it does from any other nation in the world, and the FDA’s rejection rate of Chinese food imports—mainly due to veterinary drug residues or contamination—is much higher than those from its other trading partners.

Continuing safety problems with China’s food exports prompted stricter inspection standards in many nations, such as Japan’s dramatic increasing of its technical standards for the import of food products from China in 2002, increasing the number of inspection criteria for vegetables from 6 to 40. Tokyo’s regulators have also come up with 40 new criteria for poultry products, 80 for fruit juice, and 91 for rice from China alone. In 2002, the EU blocked completely the import of many Chinese animal products, which involved 94 Chinese firms and led to $623 million in losses for China’s exporters. For example, EU food regulators banned Chinese lobsters and shrimp after they tested positive for chloramphenicol, a source of aplastic anemia and a potent antibiotic. The EU also increased its honey import standards in the same year. These bans decreased Chinese poultry, livestock, and honey exports by 32.9, 4.1, and 16.7 percent, respectively, according to government statistics. EU bans on animal products were eased off in 2004 after China visibly improved its veterinary standards, but bans on fish have since re-emerged. For example, in October 2006, Taiwan banned the import of mitten or hairy crabs from China because of traces of carcinogens, Wal-Mart removed Chinese catfish from its American stores in April 2007 due to antibiotic contamination, and Russia’s federal agricultural products inspection agency banned fish from China in June 2007.

China’s meat, fish, and poultry exports continue to be the focus of bans from European, U.S., and Japanese food regulators. However, after the April 2007 melamine-tainted dog food scandal in the United States, the issue of toxic food additives in Chinese exports gained global attention. While international concerns about Chinese food exports are now at their highest, domestically the problem of food safety is even more serious, and represents a growing and significant threat to the health of Chinese consumers, and the power base of the ruling elite. Reflecting the gradual trend towards greater information transparency in China, Chinese news media and central government agencies have been releasing more reports on the growing food contamination problems. I think we all know where this is heading.