I have become wary of products made in China with the spate of recent news about product contamination – melamine in infant formula that affected 40,000 Chinese babies, melamine in animal feed that showed up in eggs, melamine in White Rabbit candy. But similar issues were already in the news even in previous years. The infant formula issue occurred in 2004, and in the years that followed, there came news about red-yolk eggs contaminated with a dangerous dye, steroids in pig feed, toothpaste and cough syrup with diethylene glycol, a hazardous substance, melamine in pet food, lead in toys, a multinational fastfood chain putting a toxic dye in its roast chicken wings – the list would probably be longer if we exhaust all Internet sites that could possibly contain reports such as these. (There’s actually a list here.)

Researchers have studied the food regulation system in China and what they report is not good. A study in 2006 described the food safety system in China as being exclusive of, among others, the “course of planting, breeding and storing as well as the information on how to produce, manage and use food additives and feed; lax and deficient regulations under the Food Safety Law; lack of systems in place to investigate recalcitrant supervisors; and discrepancy between the jurisdiction of the Food Safety Law and the actual situation.” The Chinese government is not proactive in regulating their food industry, based on a report that states: “The government is more interested in—or more capable of—keeping scandals quiet than it is in preventing mass cases of poisoning from occurring.”

All this information is very scary. China has become the factory of the world, exporting food products (both intermediate and final goods) for humans and animals to many countries. I just checked my toothpaste (brand of a multinational long-established in the country) and it is made in China (oh no!). Distributors of animal feeds in the province carry a Chinese logo (could the pork and chicken in our local markets be tainted with melamine or steroids?). The BFAD has banned foods (liquid and powdered milk, candy, biscuits, chocolate bars and drinks, and yogurt) containing dairy products from China. As of fourth quarter last year, the BFAD has actually identified 6 contaminated products in the local market. I look suspiciously at that spoonful of yogurt and think twice before ingesting it. For nearly every product I touch, I wonder if it contains any made-in-China material. Many countries have started banning certain products from China. Paranoia has certainly crept in.

The reasons why manufacturers resort to these unethical and unsafe practices are obvious – to cut costs by using cheaper but hazardous inputs so they can sell their goods at lower prices in the world market (profits). As a result, China has been consistently enjoying a huge trade surplus the past months. They are also forced to be competitive price-wise in the WTO-regulated world economy in order to support the burgeoning Chinese population (necessity). Factor in the fact that western multinationals subcontracting to China-based manufacturers are lax in supervising and monitoring the activities of their Chinese partners (just think of sweatshops and unfair wages), and an inefficient food regulation system by the Chinese government and we have a business environment conducive for cheating.

It now makes me wonder how the Philippines is faring in its own food industry regulation system. One need only watch Mike Enriquez’ Imbestigador to get a glimpse of unsafe practices in our food industry. Knowing how Filipinos can be such copy cats, soon I will become wary of our very own products. With so many industry players catering to the need for food of 94 million Filipinos (NSCB), I doubt if the BFAD and DOH can handle all the work of ensuring the safety of locally-made food products.

Related post: The China factor

Filed under: Economics, Health and food, In the news, January 2009 | You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.