faked/poisonous foodstuff

[deezy]

When a person prepares food with the intention of selling it to a stranger for profit, there is no incentive for the preparer to keep the food pure. In fact, the opposite incentive exists, since the less effort the preparer spends in keeping the food pure, the more profit the preparer makes.

I disagree. Any seller relies upon repeat business. And that's your incentive to sell a good product.

I mean sure, a coke dealer can cut flour into his blow and save lots of money...but word travels fast and he's not gonna get much business after that.

Which is why I didn't believe the "cardboad baozi" story. Sure, you can make it LOOK sorta meaty...but the proof is in the pudding and I can taste even small bits of cardboard in food. Much moreso a giant wad of it. So, this scam would be exposed pretty quick. Like angry customers coming back within 30 seconds after taking their first bite "quick!"

And, how much money is a guy really gonna be able to save going through the laborious process of mashing up cardboard to use as a small amount of filler, anyways?

I can see subbing other inferior ingredients that are far harder to detect...but cardboard for pork would be near-impossible to pull-off.

[billiardsmike]

I guess that the other two stories that bothered me the most were:

Counterfeiters in southern China who discovered that they could more closely duplicate the taste of Moutai by adding DDT.

A farmer using illness-inducing additives to make his pork redder and more attractive, saying "City people have free health care, so it's not a problem."

I can't swear to the validity, especially since my source is China Daily. I have noticed that I'm buying a few more things from Jenny Lou's and the Friendship Store lately, though.

[deezy]

Counterfeiters in southern China who discovered that they could more closely duplicate the taste of Moutai by adding DDT.

Is that something people really want to duplicate?

I have to admit, for hard Chinese liquor, stuff like Kinmen Kaoliang blows Moutai away... I'm still not sure why Moutai is so popular in China - is it just an acquired taste or due to lack of competition?

[gougou]

I disagree. Any seller relies upon repeat business.

Not a concept in Chinese management yet. The market is not very organized, so word doesn't travel as fast as you might think. And if you sell to 1.3 billion people just once - well, that's quite a lot of money to be made.

[cdn_in_bj]

Counterfeiters in southern China who discovered that they could more closely duplicate the taste of Moutai by adding DDT.

I have really cut back on my drinking here, especially after hearing from locals that over half of the hard liquor served in bars is fake.

Even with the non-fake local brands, I have noticed that certain brands of baijiu and even pijiu will give me really bad headaches and hangovers, even if I don't drink to the point of getting drunk. I have recently learned that this could be due to a higher concentration "fusel alcohols" in the booze as a result of poor fermentation and/or distillation processes.

For example, just drinking one shot of 金酒 will leave me with a headache within an hour.

[82riceballs]

i read in "world" magazine that sometimes workers who get pissed decide to urinate in what they're making... *gross*