Food Safety and Regulations in China

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Brief Review
Attractions with Foreign Companies
Main Parts of the Issue
References

Introduction

Creating conditions for improving the welfare of the population is a priority in the socio-economic policy of any state. The quality and safety of food raw materials and food products is an important tool for maintaining and strengthening physical and mental health, preventing the development of noncommunicable diseases, and increasing life expectancy. Meeting human nutritional needs, taking into account traditions, habits, economic conditions and following the highest standards of medical science, is the main task of the food industry. Today, China, the world’s largest food producer, has chosen the path to reforming domestic legislation in the field of food safety, by eliminating the contradictions between national standards and technical regulations for food production. Cultural practices in regards to cuisine is highly complex due to the fact that China is composed of various inner sub-cultures. This increased variety of cultural practices lead to numerous regulations of food production industry. (Si, Regnier-Davies, & Scott, 2018) The need for systematization is due to the fact that as a whole about 5 thousand different kinds of technical regulations have accumulate.

Brief Review

The regulations introduced do not interact with each other due to the fact that they were adopted, as mentioned above, not only by different departments, but also at different times. Too many already adopted standards do not contribute to the implementation of the necessary legal regulation and impose an additional burden on the regulatory authorities in terms of developing the necessary material. Therefore, over the past two years in China, more than 300 new food safety standards have been adopted. These new standards are aimed primarily at improving the quality of dairy products, as well as limiting the permissible content of toxic substances and pesticides in vegetables and fruits (Leggett, 2017). However, the economic growth of China has a major impact in the overall improvement of food safety regulations. After processing all previously adopted regulations, it is expected that a single, mandatory standard for the food safety system will be formed. In this case, the main work will be carried out according to the experience of international food standards, in accordance with the level of socio-economic development.

Attractions with Foreign Companies

As planned by the proponents of this process, these actions should attract foreign companies. Firstly, because the price increase will be insignificant relative to other manufacturers. Secondly, an improvement in product quality is expected, this should increase the demand for Chinese-made products. China in its movement towards an industrial, and in some respects even post-industrial society is a curious example of this process, which combines different types of risk. These are the dangers associated with high-speed trains and environmental pollution; but the question of food is especially interesting. Chinese society is more prone to food panic than any other. Therefore, the infrastructure is built to support the large population size with maximum safety as a primary concern.

Many Chinese are still considering science and market mechanisms as a solution to food security problems, which means that they seem to be far from the post-industrial stage of risk society. The demographics of the given nation is manifested in the 1.4 billion people with slowly growing older population due to the low birth rate. These disagreements stem from the complexity of food security issues in China, for which there are no borders of the pre-modern, industrial modern and post-industrial modern era, and, therefore, are a mixture of different types of risk.

Main Parts of the Issue

Firstly, food falsification is a critical part of the given issue. For example, unripe strawberries or cherries are painted with carmine so that they can be sold at a higher price (Zuo, Schwartz, & Wu, 2017). The most common falsified food is low-quality frying oil, which is produced from the contents of sewers or restaurant scraps; with its help in China, probably every tenth dish is cooked.

Secondly, nutritional supplements. Antibiotics, dyes and hormones are widely added to animal feed and human food. For example, a large amount of Clenbuterol is added to pig food, which can reduce the amount of fat in the body. In the 1980s, it was banned in the West due to the harmful effects on humans (Si et al., 2018). In China, the first case of poisoning with maple-saturated pork-rich pork occurred in Guangzhou in 1998 (Kan & Yuen, 2018). Despite a government ban, infections have been reported even in 2009 and 2011 (Si et al., 2018). Thirdly, he problem is that many pesticides used as preservatives. They are used, for example, in Sichuan for pickling vegetables and in Zhejiang in the production of ham (Zuo et al., 2017). Fourth, counterfeit food and medicine are another crucial component of the issue.

An example is pseudo-milk powder made from starch in Anhui province. In 1985, a drug counterfeit was discovered, in which more than a thousand people from enterprises and local government departments in Fujian participated (Leggett, 2017). However, China’s global implication is immense due to the export-based economy, which seeks its most of the consumers outside of China. Strict export regulations are imposed because collaborating nations take part in setting the given regulatory acts.

The first level is problems of ordinary food hygiene. This type of problem continues to exist, but it has largely moved from home kitchens and public canteens to food processing plants and snack bars. Many family-owned enterprises operate in poor sanitary conditions and using primitive equipment. Thus, in 2003, 70% of new food enterprises in Guangzhou had to be closed due to non-compliance with quality standards (Kan & Yuen, 2018). Packaging and labeling are also poorly regulated; corruption is rampant. According to Chinese doctors and officials, the risks associated with food hygiene can be controlled and reduced through educational campaigns, product quality control, regulation and integration of the food market. The second level is unsafe food. Its reason is the widespread use of mineral fertilizers, dyes, etc. In the first place is the problem of pesticides.

The third level is poisonous food, which manifests itself in being hazardous for consumption. This is a new phenomenon among food security concerns in China. In pursuit of profit, manufacturers deliberately add toxic chemicals to human food or animal feed, and traders promote the sale of such goods. At the same time, recognizing the illegality of their actions, merchants give these goods out for healthy products. Not only entrepreneurs, managers and officials in quality control departments, but also government employees are involved in such production and marketing. In 2008, a scandal broke out with a baby formula produced by the Sanlu group; To artificially increase the amount of protein in milk, melamine was added to it – a chemical used in the manufacture of plastic and tanning of the skin (Si et al., 2018). There were six deaths and 51,900 hospitalizations of children with serious kidney problems (Si et al., 2018). Therefore, there are many influencing factors that contribute to the given problem.

References

Kan, K., & Yuen, S. (2018). Visceral politics across the Strait: Food and risk in China Taiwan relations. China Information, 32(3), 443-462.

Leggett, A. (2017). Bringing green food to the Chinese table: How civil society actors are changing consumer culture in China. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1-19.

Si, Z., Regnier-Davies, J., & Scott, S. (2018). Food safety in urban China: Perceptions and coping strategies of residents in Nanjing. China Information, 32(3), 377-399.

Zuo, W., Schwartz, M. S., & Wu, Y. (2017). Institutional forces affecting corporate social responsibility behavior of the Chinese food industry. Business & Society, 56(5), 705-737.

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Food Safety and Regulations in China

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