Although a national debate over dog meat consumption has raged between traditionalists and middle-class pet owners, Ele.me claims its decision to stop selling dog meat products was not a moral choice. Instead, Ele.me says it can’t sell dog meat products because a lack of national regulations over the dog meat trade, which is a health threat to its customers. Additionally, Ele.me claims dog meat products are more likely to carry hazardous diseases than other meats.

The positive news from Ele.me comes as a change of pace from the controversial company. Despite an investment of $1.25 billion from Alibaba last year, Ele.me has run into several scandals recently.

Twenty Ele.me customers got food poisoning after ordering from the company this past June. Back in March, Ele.me was fined $19,000 for a number of food safety violations including the use of unlicensed restaurants as part of its food network.

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About a hundred parents descended on the Haiyang Yingcai Experimental School in Yantai on Monday to protest the school’s alleged use of pig and chicken feed to prepare meals for its schools.

The scandal spread when photographs shared online showed the cafeteria’s unpalatable food being prepared. One showed an opened bag of chicken feed with a chicken outline stenciled on the bag.

The school explained that nothing is wrong with its food. Eggs suspected of being rotten by the parents were explained to be “tea eggs”, while the opened bags of chicken feed were explained away as not being used as part of the students’ lunches.

While a government investigation is pending, the photos of the food suggest that it is may not be suitable for humans or animals.

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The father, a 46 year-old man named Feng, noticed that his hot chocolate had a strange taste, which he later described as Sprite. A second sip caused his tongue to go numb and his throat to burn.

Things went from bad to worse after Feng approached restaurant staff. After showing them the contents of his cup, the McDonald’s employees had the following conversation right in front of him:

Employee A: Is that hydrogen peroxide?
Employee B: No, that looks like disinfectant.

Feng and his son were immediately taken to hospital for emergency treatment. A doctor found them to have suffered damage to the liver, gall bladder, spleen and stomach. Although Feng was eventually released with non-life-threatening injuries, his son remains in hospital for observation.

The McDonald’s restaurant manager confirmed to the Chongqing Evening Report that an employee had mistakenly put disinfectant into a hot chocolate beverage thinking that it was hot water.

The local Food and Drug Inspection Agency is investigating.

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The newest fake food safety issue to hit China is fake jellyfish, and what makes this story so different is that it is wholly created in a vat from a chemical concoction.

Recent police arrests suggest there may have been 10 tons of the concoction on sale in eastern China over the past year.

Three suspects were arrested and 150 kilograms of fake jellyfish were confiscated by police in Huzhou, Zhejiang on April 22. The bust led to another three suspects being arrested in Changzhou, Jiangsu where one ton of fake jellyfish were seized.

The fake jellyfish are thought to have been sold around the Suzhou area.

The criminals created the fake jellyfish using a combination of sodium alginate, calcium chloride and aluminum sulfate. Officials say the fake jellyfish is not safe for human consumption due to have elevated levels of aluminum, hindering intelligence and memory.

One of the suspects arrested in Huzhou, a man named Yuan, confessed that he knew he was risking public health by selling fake jellyfish. And yet, Yuan said it took less time to manufacture fake jellyfish at half the cost of producing authentic ones.

Here’s how you can tell the difference between real and fake jellyfish:

Fake jellyfish (seen on the left) is completely translucent and odorless. It has a very tough texture; a strand of fake jellyfish is difficult to tear apart using one’s hands.

One the other hand, real jellyfish (seen above to the right) has a subtle white and yellow color with a fishy smell to it. Its meat has a brittle feel to it when bitten, somewhat like a crisp cucumber. Real jellyfish makes a crunchy sound when eaten and provides a “satisfactory” mouth texture.

It’s for this last quality that jellyfish is prized as a popular Chinese delicacy. Like abalone or shark fin, Chinese favor these foods for their “mouth feel” alone, having been prepared in broths or sauces that give it its taste.

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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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The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration investigated 100 restaurants providing food delivered through Dianping, Meituan, and ele.me. Of the 100 businesses, 81 had issues such as failing to display the proper permits, or worse, displaying borrowed or forged permits.

The individual restaurants are now being investigated for criminal wrongdoing as consumer complaints continue to mount. At the same time, Dianping, Meituan, and ele.me have been ordered by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration to ensure the restaurants they do business with comply with all of the necessary permits or else face fines of upwards of 200,000 yaun (US $31,400).

While the accusations may not be enough to dissuade consumers from using online services to order their next meal, consider for a moment that according to the Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Commission, ele.me was able to provide catering license details for only 13 percent of restaurants listed on the popular site. As for the remaining 87 percent, it remains a mystery. Buyer beware.

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In all, over 700 tons of tainted meat was seized, including 60 tons of diseased dead pigs, 250 tons of tainted meat products, and 425 tons of frozen meat which is believed to have been smuggled into the country.

The seizures were between April and September this year and were the result of a police investigation targeting unsafe meat. The investigation resulted in the arrest of 378 suspects, more than double the amount the previous year, and came at a time when food safety scandals involving tainted meat have deeply concerned the Chinese public.

In December 2014, twelve vendors were arrested for selling diseased or dead pigs to butchers in Chongqing and nearby territories. In May 2013, three Fujian farmers tasked with destroying diseased pigs were arrested after they were caught selling the carcasses. Last year also saw the arrests of people who had made beef jerky and sausages out of diseased pigs. And in January 2009, eight workers at a butcher shop were arrested for selling diseased meat. Police seized some 4,000 pounds of unsafe pork in the raid.

In a new investigation commenced last month, and expected to run until March of 2016, police are turning their attention to illegal food additives. But despite best efforts by police, they continue to fight a losing battle. Su Shengfeng, chief inspector at the Guangdong Food and Drug Administration, explained why policing unsafe food is so difficult:

People with poor awareness of the law are lured by huge profits to produce, smuggle and sell foods that are of shoddy quality or even pose threats to public health, which is why it is difficult to eradicate food safety crimes. Besides the special crackdowns as deterrents, we increase the cost of breaking the law by putting offenders on a black list and exposing them to the public.

Su added that the government plans to increase rewards for public tip-offs, as it is next to impossible for government agents to discover these secretive operations on their own.

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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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