The fine comes after the CCTV consumer rights television show, “3.15”, discovered that a number of restaurants registered with the delivery service were unlicensed and storing food in unsanitary conditions. Many restaurants relied on rusty utensils and equipment, and the kitchens were full of dirt and oil stains.

The show revealed that a small group of men were responsible for supplying food from five different restaurants registered on Ele.me, all using the same cramped ten square meter kitchen space. Kitchen workers were filmed ripping bags of food open with their teeth, or using their fingers to taste the food.

Five of the restaurants were closed by Shanghai authorities for failing to have the necessary certifications.

Ele.me’s CEO, Zhang Xuhao, apologized for the violations. “We must admit that Ele.me has not fulfilled its obligations in overseeing food safety. The management and I accept full responsibility in this matter. We hereby offer an apology to all our clients that have supported us, as well as apologizing to all the businesses that may have been affected by this.”

Last year, Alibaba reportedly invested $1.25 billion in Ele.me, thereby becoming the company’s largest shareholder. At the same time, Alibaba has faced quality assurance issues of its own, following allegations that 40 percent of its online goods are counterfeit.

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According to the National Food and Drug Inspection Bureau, the 35 restaurants have been accused of using poppy seed capsules or one of its variants such as papverine, morphine, codeine, noscapine, and thebaine.

Poppy seed capsules (shown above) are most frequently used in hot pot, noodle soups, and lobster sauce. In addition to its potentially addictive properties, the additive is said to make food “tastier”.

Shanghai restaurants and stores caught in the crackdown include Jiaxin Restaurant, Youqin Food Store, Dongjikai Restaurant, Shengxian Restaurant, the popular Zhouheiya franchise, and a Nanjing steamed bun eatery on Gulian Road in Jinshan District.

Beijing restaurants accused of using poppy seed capsules include Huda Restaurant; the Diannan Fuxi Eatery in Liangxiang, Fangxiang; Baoheju Restaurant in Dongcheng District; Rong Roast Chicken in Xicheng District; and the Zhenbao Restaurant chain. Other restaurants named in the crackdown include locations in Wenzhou, Zhejiang; Loudi, Hunan; and Weifang, Shandong.

In February 2014, a Foshan restaurant was raided after a number of men testing positive for morphine complained that they never used the drug, and suspected the food they ate at a local restaurant. A search of the restaurant’s kitchen discovered a bottle containing opium, morphine, poppy pods, and other illegal additives.

Poppy seeds are not uncommon in Guangdong or throughout parts of China, and had been traditionally used in dishes until recently banned. In Chongqing, it had been routinely used in hotpot dishes. Some mala tang (麻辣烫) and marinated foods also use poppy seedpods for extra flavors.

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This may seem like a strange practice for people who can walk into a store and buy milk in a box, but Chinese consumers have been shaken by a continuing series of food scandals. Even though it was a while ago, many haven’t forgotten about the 2008 Sanlu milk scandal in which products laced with melamine resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims, including the deaths of six infants.

For that reason, Chinese consumers are focusing on food safety, and prefer imports over domestic products. The fears have grown so much that some Chinese even import rice from Japan.

But is drinking milk straight from a cow safe? Is it healthier, even? That depends on whom you ask, and in which context.

The US Food and Drug Administration says all milk for consumption should undergo pasteurization, a process in which heat kills off harmful bacteria like E-coli, Listeria and salmonella that cause foodborne diseases. The FDA quotes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in saying more than 1,500 US citizens became sick from drinking raw milk between 1993 and 2006.

However, there’s another way of thinking that suggests raw milk is healthier to drink specifically because it hasn’t undergone pasteurization. The Farmer’s Almanac said that the process of pasteurization also kills off many of the “good bacteria” in milk that helps drinkers with digestion and boosts their health.

Furthermore, pasteurizing milk also breaks down many of the proteins it contains that would have been used as antibodies used to fight off disease and infection. The Farmer’s Almanac also said that raw milk, due to the bacteria it has that are removed by pasteurization, can be consumed by people who are lactose-intolerant.

But there is one thing that raw milk can’t provide that processed milk does have, and that’s Vitamin D, an essential nutrient for children. Raw milk drinkers must take Vitamin D supplements, or get them from elsewhere.

And while it’s always great to cut out the middleman, there’s always the question of the quality of the source of the milk, which in this case spends its days in a Chinese city. While milk sold in stores is regularly inspected, we can’t be sure of the health of these two cows and their milk which is being sold freely on the streets.

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In a country where premium breaded goods are always hard to find, BreadTalk has long been popular with its Chinese customers. But now the Singapore-based franchise has come under fire after an investigative television show alleged the breadmaker is violating several health codes by reusing cooking oil and replacing expiration labels on condiments.

A correspondent at Shenzhen TV’s “Time and Place for the Rule of Law” went undercover working as an employee at a BreadTalk store in the city’s Nanshan District. With the use of a hidden camera, the correspondent was able to record behind-the-scenes footage on how things are run and gain some candid revelations from other BreadTalk employees.

The undercover reporter discovered that the BreadTalk store was reusing cooking oil used to fry doughnuts, with some of the oil said to be in the system for months.  As seen on the hidden camera footage, the correspondent was able to capture another employee saying, “The oil is used repeatedly and we will add new oil into the tank if it’s not enough.” Another employee said the store will only add new oil whenever an inspector shows up at the store.

BreadTalk has since responded on its Weibo account, saying the TV report is completely untrue and that their stores commonly change their cooking oil. A Chongqing BreadTalk store has also responded by saying it changes its oil every two days. BreadTalk also added that Shenzhen’s quality supervision bureau inspected the Nanshan store last Thursday and determined the cooking oil was fine.

The undercover report also couldn’t determine where the shop’s drinking water came from, with several answers from different staff saying it’s either tap water or filtered.  As the report notes, all of the employees drank boiled water instead of filtered water at the store.

The correspondent found that when jars of bread condiments for sale were found to have gone past their expiry dates, BreadTalk staff would exchange their tags for newer ones instead of throwing them out. “Morning-shift staff will inspect the sauces every day and mark the expired ones on labels, but the evening-shift staff will replace them with new labels and continue using the sauces,” said the reporter.

Employees at the BreadTalk store were not in the habit of using vinegar to “sterilize the mayonnaise” used in the store’s popular meat floss bread either, saying, “I’m not going to eat it myself.”

Since entering the Chinese market in 2003, BreadTalk has opened branches in over 50 Chinese cities.

Related:

• Shenzhen Food Safety Crackdown Finds Contaminated Meat, Noodles and Fish
• Worst Nightmare? Shenzhen Markets Caught Selling “Lamb” That Was Actually Dog Meat
• New “Smart Chopsticks” Tell You If Your Food Is Poisonous
• Newspaper: Serving Expired Meat a Problem Throughout China’s Food Industry

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The undercover report revealed that the noodles were made in a cramped room filled with workers wearing neither gloves nor face masks. Fans constantly blew the workers’ sweat and their cigarette ashes all over the noodles, while the floor was covered in water and the walls were covered in mildew.

The owner and operator of the shop, Mr. Shi, defended his business, arguing he either met or exceeded the normal conditions of other Shenzhen noodle makers: “We change the water used to boil our noodles, but some [of the other producers] almost never change their water,” he said.

Shi accused other Shenzhen noodle makers of using preservatives, whereas his shop only used baking powder. Shi also said nobody in the business uses gloves or face masks.

Shi’s noodle workshop produced approximately 1,000 kilograms of noodles a day, supplying numerous breakfast stalls in the Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park area.

For Shi, the closure may just be a temporary setback. According to the district’s market supervision authority, Shi is permitted to reopen if he addresses the health and safety issues exposed in the recent report.

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After years of food scandals and diminished consumer confidence, China is cracking down on food safety violators with harsher fines and punishment thanks to a revision to the existing Food Safety Law.

Set to go into effect October 1, the amendment was recently passed into law by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature. Among the highlights are heavier fines, more compensation for victims, automatic jail time for offenders, and punishment for officials who are in dereliction of their duties.

According to the amended law, food producers may be fined 30 times the value of their unsafe products, an increase from 10 times. As well, if the value of the unsafe food products is less than RMB 10,000 ($1,630), the offender may face fines of up to RMB 150,000, three times the previous amount. The cost of compensation for victims has increased significantly.

The amended Food Safety Law will allow police to jail offenders for up to 15 days without a trial.The amended Food Safety Law will allow police to jail offenders for up to 15 days without a trial. This “administrative detention” is similar to punishments given out to passengers that misbehave on airplanes, but is separate from the month-long detention in which suspects can be put in jail before police formally charge them with a crime.

The amended law will make landlords responsible for what happens on their property, just as it will make online platforms responsible for food vendors upon their websites, requiring their registration. As well, the new law will punish food safety officials who fail at their jobs with demotion and dismissal.

China’s domestic milk industry will undergo further regulations to help regain consumer confidence. Milk producers will be required to test every batch of milk, conduct regular internal inspections and submit reports to regulators.

China Daily is calling the revisions the “toughest food safety law” in China’s history.

China’s first Food Safety Law came into effect in 2009, a year after a devastating melamine food scandal rocked the milk industry, killing six babies and causing hundreds of thousands of others to fall ill.

Related:

• Poor Quality Mainland Baby Formula a “National Shame”
• Melamine Yogurt Scandal Widens While Sanlu Chief Gets Reduced Prison Term
• Now It’s Chinese-made Straws That Will Make You Sick
• Tonnes of Dongguan Gutter Oil Processed & Sold By Unlicensed Companies
• Latest Food Safety Scandal: Chinese Potato Chips Can Give You Dementia
• Heinz Blasted For Delay In Recalling Tainted Baby Food in China

The post China Gets Tough on Offenders with Revised Food Safety Law appeared first on The Nanfang.

With several food safety scandals in China lately, the topic of food safety has become a top priority for the Chinese public. And when it comes to food products from abroad, Chinese authorities are assuring the public that safety standards will be enforced even as China’s food imports continue to rise.

The National Bureau of Quality Inspection said China imported $48.24 billion worth of food products last year, representing an average annual growth rate of 17.6 percent China imported $48.24 billion worth of food products last year, representing an average annual growth rate of 17.6 percent and a staggering increase of 420 percent over a ten year period.

The bureau announced its annual white paper on the quality and safety of food import on World Health Day, which has the theme “food safety” this year.

In total, China imported 35 million tons of imported goods from 192 countries and territories last year that include the European Union, the USA, Australia, Brazil, Russia, and Argentina. The most popular imported goods include dairy products, oil, grain products, wine, and sugar.

However, despite a number of food imports getting blacklisted, the overwhelming majority of China’s food scandals do not concern foreign imported food products shipped into China from overseas, the dominion over which the National Bureau of Quality Inspection has authority over.

International fast food restaurant franchises like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut were rocked by a food scandal last year when it was revealed that local supplier Husi Foods had been using expired meat as part of its supply. Also in 2014, KFC was implicated along with a number of Chinese fast food restaurants when it was shown it had been using dirty water to make its ice. Just as it was prepared to announce the opening of several local stores in the PRD, a whistle-blower alleged that Wal-Mart had engaged in unsafe practices in food preparation.

However, there has been one major food scandal involving a foreign brand importing food products to China. US baby formula maker Abbott Laboratories recalled its products from China after New Zealand dairy maker Fonterra found trace evidence of bacteria that may lead to botulism.

The scandal also embroiled the countries of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia after Fonterra warned the international community of this potential health threat. China reacted by banning all milk product imports from Australia and New Zealand.

Related:

• Latest Food Safety Scandal: Chinese Potato Chips Can Give You Dementia
• Tourists Avoiding China Because of Pollution, Corruption, and Bad Food
• Melamine Yogurt Scandal Widens While Sanlu Chief Gets Reduced Prison Term
• Now It’s Chinese-made Straws That Will Make You Sick
• Tonnes of Dongguan Gutter Oil Processed & Sold By Unlicensed Companies
• KFC Chicken Wings in China, Complete with Deep-Fried Feathers

The post China Importing More Food Than Ever Before as Safety Concerns Mount appeared first on The Nanfang.

In response, McDonald’s China has said they demand their food suppliers in China to fully comply with Chinese food laws and regulations pertaining to antibiotics. But the company stopped short of saying human antibiotics would be banned here, even elaborating:

The use of antibiotics in preserving the health of animal health is completely necessary. McDonald’s USA has stopped using human antibiotics, but not the use of all antibiotics.

That answer is not definitive, leading many to believe McDonald’s will still use human antibiotics in food products in China. Naturally, Chinese people had a lot to say about it, with many blaming the government for setting the bar so low McDonald’s didn’t need to do much:

不睡回笼觉会死星人：
Blame people for doing what at McDonald’s? Over here (in China), food (safety) requirements aren’t high enough, so (these Chinese McDonald’s workers) don’t have the duty to prepare food that meets the standards (from another country).

辰时赏雨：
It’s clear what these words mean: China has lower standards.

遥遥11：
It’s (other Chinese) that are giving poor habits to foreign companies!

huan-h：
It’s because Chinese people have already infused (the food) with so many poisons that you can’t fit any more.

幸运的小新家的小白：
It serves these people right, seeing how they exhibit such a superior attitude from eating it. Don’t know where this confidence comes from.

膜拜的水獭：
(China) doesn’t care yet, so other people are naturally going to say that they are complying with national rules and regulations.

夙_倾尘：
How is the meat and chicken of the markets in our country? How is the chicken meat in Chinese General Tsao’s Chicken?

花满楼愁：
The food safety of foreign fast food and Chinese domestic restaurants are just about the same. Just how safe do you think your barbeque meat, night market, snacks, and cooked food are?

In a globalized world, it is going to be more difficult for companies to make grand announcements in one region while neglecting others, no matter what the laws say.

The post McDonald’s Will Stop Using Antibiotics in the US, but What About China? appeared first on The Nanfang.

The anonymous whistleblower poses with a letter announcing his suspension from his job.

The initial findings of a government investigation into a Shenzhen-area Walmart have not shown that staff were engaged in unsafe food practices, despite an employee going undercover to show brazen violations of food safety standards. That employee has since been suspended.

The Shenzhen Market Supervision Management Department – Luohu Division has announced that a preliminary investigation has not found any illegal activity at the Shenzhen Walmart store, reports Yangcheng Evening Report. The anonymous informant had made the allegations in a television report in which he said the store’s upper management were aware of all incidents because they were the result of cost-saving measures undertaken by the store.

Among the allegations of improper food preparation include the prolonged use of frying oil that was not changed for a month at a time, the use of expired meats in customer meals, and instances where rice overgrown with worms was re-sold in the prepared foods department.

While the investigation is still ongoing, we have some clues as to how the investigation is being conducted.

The Shenzhen Market Supervision Management Department has inspected the operations area, storeroom, and freezer room at the Honghu Walmart store. Inspectors have taken a total of six samples: frying oil, rice, and two each of cooked beef and raw materials.

The inspection said samples of cooking oil taken at the Walmart in question “met standards” despite the same report admitting that national Chinese standards do not provide any clear regulations on the use of cooking oil.

The inspectors have still not yet found any evidence of worms appearing in rice, which apparently happened in March 2013, according to the whistleblower’s video. A source said that may be too long ago to matter to the investigation:

If he was able to record a recent video and then report it on the same day, then there would have been a better result.

The preliminary investigation has also not found that Walmart exceeded the time limits associated with the preservation of meat ingredients.

Walmart previously denied the allegations made against it, and insisted it upholds the highest safety standards while remaining more than willing to assist any and all official investigations.

Meanwhile the employee who blew the whistle is collecting wages during his suspension. A notice the employee received on August 10 reads:

Although the business department has verified in a preliminary investigation that your complaint is not factual, there may still be a follow-up investigation. As the complainant, there is an obligation for the business department to do a follow-up investigation. At the same time, the company will publicize the results of this internal investigation and will require your cooperation. In order to advance to the next stage of investigations, the company has decided to stop employing you.

The informant said he blew the whistle after being reassigned to the meat department on July 29, a move that made the employee extremely dissatisfied. Furthermore, the informant said that he had previous altercations with his store superior, one of which was reported to the police.

However, he said these factors didn’t cause him to come forward:

I don’t want to hide my conscience anymore. If I wanted to make money, I could have gone to the industry department and made a report to earn a reward. I just want to let the customers know just what they are eating at Walmart.

The employee had three videos that were recently used as part of the television news report: a January 2014 video depicting old oil that wasn’t changed, a February 2014 video depicting the use of expired meats in which the employee himself altered a best before date, and a March 2013 video of rice that was allegedly infested with worms and sold.

The informant said turning to the media has left him isolated:

No employees are willing to take a stand on this and admit what they have seen and done. Instead, they say that they don’t know anything. It’s like as though I’m the one person that is deliberately provoking Walmart.

No word on when the full report will be published.

Photo: Southcn

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Melamine is in the news again as earlier reports of melamine-laced candies produced in Guangdong province may be worse than first thought, while the man behind the melamine scandal in 2008 has won early release from prison.

More than 1,300 cases of melamine-laced yogurt candies produced by Chaozhou Extensive Food Product Company are now said to have been sent to Shenyang in northeast China, indicating the latest melamine-laced scandal may have impacted many more people than originally reported on July 30.

According to a report by Jinyang Net, Guangdong’s food quality watchdog and the provincial police bureau said 38 tons of raw materials and semi-finished products were confiscated during a police raid this past February. No melamine-laced products from the Chaozhou company are available in the market at the moment, according to the local police.

Tian Wenhua, former chairman of Sanlu Group

Although the bust was in February, the report only appeared on July 30. That’s the same time the former Chairman of Sanlu Group, the company that was manufacturing and distributing melamine-laced milk powder for children, saw his jail sentence reduced to 17 years. Tian Wenhua originally was to serve a life term.

The tainted milk powder left at least six infants dead and sickened another 290,000 in 2008. Next month will mark the six anniversary of the Sanlu milk scandal.

Some online users complained, “Sanlu is gone, but melamine is still here”. One Weibo user wrote, “What about those poor kids? What about their heart-broken parents? Those bastards!” Another commented, “After the scandal died down, those people with powerful backgrounds still do whatever they want. This is the injustice of our justice system”.

Photos: CCTV; Xinhua

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