Barreled water or bottled water? Over 400 cases of noro linked to Chinese schools

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Ben Chapman

According to CRI English, there’s a whole lot of noro going through Chinese schools. Over 400 students attending schools in Haning City and Haiyan County have come down ill with the gastrointestinal virus and investigators believe it is linked to water. A few weeks ago Japan dealt with its own massive school-linked norovirus outbreak that was eventually traced to bread.

Classes will be suspended on Thursday and Friday but are expected to resume on Monday.

The outbreak began on Feb. 11 in Haining and Feb. 13 in Haiyan.
It is suspected that the outbreak was caused by barrelled water. All the affected schools have been using barrelled water with the same brand, said Yang Jing, head of the provincial health and family planning commission.

A further epidemiological investigation is under way, said Yang.

Governments have ordered all the schools to disinfect canteens, classrooms, dormitories and toilets.

We’re here to serve says bloated middle mgmt.; local watchdogs empowered in China food safety shake-up

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Douglas Powell

Chinese provincial governments are quickly empowering local food safety watchdogs in line with the requirements of the central government to prevent food scandals.

Since the China Food and Drug Administration was launched during the cabinet restructuring of last March to supervise the full process of food production, circulation and consumption, a primary mission of provincial governments has been to correspondingly restructure their food safety monitoring mechanism.

During the reshuffle, the functions of quality inspection departments are intensified as they gain food safety jurisdiction previously held by health as well as industry and commerce departments.

While inspecting the work in central China’s Hunan Province in mid-January, Liu Peizhi, vice minister of the administration, urged provincial governments to complete the reshuffle as quickly as possible on the premise that the restructured outfits could have sufficient resources to fulfill the mission of the administration.

Yan Zuqiang, chief of the Shanghai Municipal Food and Drug Administration, said that one goal of the restructuring was to increase the number of grassroots inspectors.

Describing the human resources structure of the old monitoring mechanism as “olive-shaped,” with the higher management on the top and grassroots inspectors on the bottom largely outnumbered by middle management, Yan said that law enforcement at the grassroots level has been very weak. Shanghai municipal legislator Xu Liping agreed that the weakness of food safety supervision was at the grassroots.

“The number of inspectors cannot be increased infinitely. The key is to improve their competency and work style,” said Xu.

3 dead, 13 hospitalized in China food poisoning

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Douglas Powell

A suspected food poisoning in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province has killed three people and left 13 more hospitalized, local authorities said late Monday.

A total of 16 people sought medical treatment on Sunday and Monday after having a wedding banquet in a village in the city of Jixi on Saturday, the city government said in a statement.

Three died after medical treatment failed and one was still not out of danger. The rest 12 are in critical condition.

Health authorities have sealed samples of food and drinks at the banquet for tests and the investigation results are to be released.

Harsher than U.S.; is a suspended death sentence enough for a Chinese gutter oil dealer?

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Douglas Powell

“Gutter oil” is, according to Time, one of the most revolting substances in the culinary pantheon. It sprang from the ingenuity of Chinese entrepreneurs, who fished out used cooking oil from drains, sewers and trash cans, decanted it into fresh bottles and sold it to an unsuspecting public.

On Jan. 7, the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court in eastern China handed out a suspended death sentence to a mastermind of one of the largest gutter-oil schemes ever recorded, worth more than $8 million in illicit sales. (A suspended death sentence usually means the convict escapes execution if no further crimes are committed.)

Seven others were sentenced to between five and 15 years in jail for the cooking-oil deception, according to state newswire Xinhua. In China’s lively microblog sphere, a slim consensus felt that the gutter-oil judgment was not harsh enough. Wrote one outraged person: “Criminals involved in food-safety issues should be sentenced to death and immediately executed.”

Just this week, abattoir workers in southern China were nabbed for injecting up to 6 kg of filthy pond water into each lamb carcass in order to bulk up its weight — and therefore price — at market. Last week, Walmart admitted that five-spiced donkey-meat treats sold in some of its Chinese stores were tainted by the addition of fox flesh. (Donkey is a common enough protein in northern China, but fox is not widely consumed.) Last fall, aficionados of skewered meat in Shanghai discovered the lamb they were savoring was actually rat.

The latest gutter-oil plot sprang from the minds of three brothers in eastern Shandong province, according to Xinhua. Beginning in 2006, the trio began selling dirty cooking oil to 17 dealers in two highly populated provinces. In October, in eastern Jiangsu province, a man was condemned to life imprisonment for using inedible animal fat, along with chicken feathers and fox fur, among other unusual substances, to bulk out the cooking oil he sold to more than 100 companies.

Meat pumped with pond water in south China

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Douglas Powell

Food processing is all about adding water and salt and charging more. That’s what a food science prof told me a long time ago.

But usually that water is clean or potable.

Reuters reports China has held seven people in southern Guangdong province for injecting dirty pond water into lamb meat to swell its weight and raise its price, state television reported in the latest food scandal to hit the world’s second largest economy.

The suspects slaughtered up to 100 sheep per day at an illegal warehouse, pumping bacteria-ridden water into the meat before it was sold at markets, food stalls and restaurants in major cities such as Guangzhou and Foshan, China Central Television (CCTV) said in a three-minute report.

Authorities raided the illegal lamb meat abattoir in Guangdong at the end of December, finding around 30 carcasses injected with water, 335 live sheep, forged inspection stamps, and equipment to inject water into the meat, the report showed.

Each sheep was pumped with up to six kilograms of water just after being slaughtered, to add extra weight.

You call that a donkey? It’s a fox, mate; Walmart recalls donkey meat after DNA of fox discovered by China’s FDA

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Douglas Powell

In further evidence that food fraud continues to be a huge problem, despite DNA testing, Walmart has recalled donkey meat after the DNA of other animals was discovered in the meat during an inspection by China’s Food and Drug Administration.

The meat was sold in China under the label of “Five Spice” donkey meat.

Walmart will reimburse the consumers for their purchases of the recalled donkey meat, according to NBC News on Jan. 2.

Walmart is also cooperating with authorities in their investigation into the Chinese food supplier who shipped the meat to Walmart. Gaining the trust of the Chinese people around offering quality in their products is important today as Walmart plans to open 110 new stores in China in the next few years.

The new stores are part of the retail and grocery giant’s latest bid to get a sizable piece of China’s $1 trillion food and grocery market today. Selling tainted donkey meat doesn’t fare well for the chain when it comes to the wealthy shoppers, suggests Shaun Rein, the managing director of the China Market Research Group.

Donkey meat probably doesn’t appeal to the majority of the population in the U.S., but it is a favorite among the Chinese people as snack. The donkey meat market only accounts for a small fraction of the meat sold in China, but much like U.S. citizens, folks in China want to trust that they are buying what the label indicates. Shoppers want to purchase the product without worrying it could be tainted with an unwanted ingredient.

Restaurants in China spike meals with opiates to keep diners coming back?

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Douglas Powell

Two south Chinese restaurants were found to be serving their food with poppy seed powder–which contains addictive substances like codeine and morphine–to ensure diners would come back for more.

Officials with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Guangzhou Province checked 70 restaurants last year, and found that two were using marinade sachets containing poppy powder, Yangcheng Evening News reported.

Zhan Ke, who works for the Guangzhou FDA Restaurant Division, told the paper that heavily seasoned or aromatic sauces may contain poppy seeds. In their spot check, the inspectors targeted soup base, home-made chilli sauce, brine, and curry sauce. Tests revealed several substances, that could damage the digestive and nervous systems, including codeine, morphine, papaverine, noscapine, and thebaine.

In 2012, inspectors in Jiangsu Province sampled over 400 hotpot soup bases, and found 10 percent contained poppy seed ingredients, according to a report by Oriental Daily earlier this year. Also, many seasoning stores in Beijing sell poppy seeds and many noodle shops and barbeque stands were big buyers.

China expands use of QR codes for restaurant food safety info

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Douglas Powell

The Haidian district of Beijing has 7,533 restaurants that have recently publicized their food safety information by providing quick response (QR) codes that can be scanned using cell phones. Customers who text “a” to 10658081 or log on iot.10086.cn/ewm-sj/ can download the food safety app. By scanning the QR code on restaurants’ menus or business licenses, customers can check information about the restaurant, including whether food additives are used in dishes and whether the business has breached food safety regulations in the past.

‘Juicy beef balls’ have no meat

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Douglas Powell

Sorenne’s taken to making “That’s what she said” jokes.

Must be her environment.

French-based megalomart Carrefour is, according to China Daily, involved in yet another food safety scandal and this time it’s over their juicy beef ball which apparently doesn’t contain meat.

According to the national food production requirement, the juicy beef ball can be mixed with a certain amount of pork and lamb to boost its taste. However, as for the beef balls sold at the retailer’s Lishuiqiao store in Beijing, the beef remains to be seen.

Carrefour said on Thursday it removed its beef ball products form shelves of all stores in Beijing, as an immediate reaction to resolve the scandal, while related products and suppliers will be investigated.

The beef ball safety problems are only limited to the Beijing area as other Carrefour stores in East China do not carry such products, according to a report of CBN Daily on Friday.

Irony is lost on some folks.

Food-safety offenders to receive harsher penalties – in China

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Douglas Powell

Shanghai has stepped up its punishment for those found to be endangering food safety by removing ceilings for fines and allowing the death penalty for severe crimes, a high official from Shanghai’s top court said on Monday.

“The threshold for sending food-safety lawbreakers to prison has been lowered. Stiff penalties both legally and economically will ensure criminals do not dare to get involved in such crimes again,” said Zou Bihua, vice-president of the Shanghai High People’s Court, at a news conference.

China Daily reports the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate jointly issued a judicial interpretation on May 2, which legal experts said gives clearer definitions of criminal behaviors in the food safety sector.

“For example, the law only defines those who caused serious food poisoning incidents or the like as guilty, but it was hard for courts to determine whether a behavior had caused such incidents or sickness and then declare someone guilty,” said Xu Liming, a presiding judge at the criminal division of the Shanghai High People’s Court.

“The judicial interpretation listed five behaviors that can be defined as causing serious food poisoning or disease. The courts can sentence all those who display such behaviors,” he said.

These behaviors include producing and selling livestock, poultry and aquatic animals that die of diseases or fail inspection and quarantine tests; and producing and selling infant food containing nutrients that do not conform to food safety standards.

A more extensive crackdown on lawbreakers, including people who provide assistance to those who produce or sell poisonous and harmful food, will be implemented.

Anybody who provides funds, loans, invoices, permits — or facilitating conditions such as business sites, transportation, storage, online sales channels and advertising — will be deemed an accomplice, according to the judicial interpretation.

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