food and drug safety in China, King of Scandals

[liuzhou]

The water in it is complete safe and free from any contamination as all of the water there is from rain and springs

Rain is free from contamination? Springs are necessarily free from contamination?

Back to the drawing board.

[Kenny同志]

Yes, the water might not be completely safe as no test has been done to confirm that. But note that I used “as”, not “because”. I came to that conclusion, well, it may well be a guess, because I live in a lovely village which is largely unaffected by air and water pollution.

[Kenny同志]

I think generally, just generally, vegetables and fruits sold at such places are comparatively safer.

The link is to my blog - an entry about fake food!

"Such places" in many cities give the impression of being farmers' markets with the honest, hard working peasants selling their own produce. Utter nonsense. The vendors are not farmers. They buy the produce from middle men and spend all day sitting there selling it. Real farmers' markets are over by 11am or noon - they have to get back to pluck the pigs and swill out the chickens or whatever it is that peasants do.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with (most of) the food, and it is often fresher in appearance than that sold in the supermarkets, but there are no guarantees there either.

Liuzhou, now thinking about it, I find it a bit ridiculous. As you said it’s an entry about fake food.

The reason was that, I read many of your articles, including the one about fake food, and I liked them, so I saved your blog to my favourites. When I was about to look for a picture of such places, your blog readily came to my mind. Hence the episode.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that food in such places are all good, however, peasants do come to such places often to trade their produce for money. At least this is the case in the bazaar in our town.

Also note that I used "generally" and "comparatively".

[liuzhou]

Thank you kenny2006woo. I am, of course, happy that you like the stuff I scribble. I was just a bit confused by this.

When the May holiday is over, I will try to

a) take some pictures of where these 'fake' peasants buy their produce from the middle men, then post them later - if I survive. They aren't exactly auditioning for a modelling career.

b) take some pictures of a real farmers' market - if i can get up early enough.

and write about both.

[Kenny同志]

That’s great! I am looking forward to reading what you will write.

Your writing has a good sense of humour which often makes me laugh; I'd say it's excellent for relaxing mind.

Just call me Kenny.

[liuzhou]

Best bet in China is to stick with reasonable brands and hope for the best, or go with organic

For some reason I woke up this morning with echoes of this in my mind.

What are reasonable brands?

The brands in the melamine crisis were mostly top level, famous brands. What do you mean by reasonable?

Organic?

What does that mean in China? Absolutely nothing. Do you think that a culture which fakes everything from A-Z is suddenly going to balk at sticking "organic" labels on anything? Organic means little in the west. It means nothing in China.

[liuzhou]

Interesting look at pork and the Olympics

Meat off menu for China’s Olympians

[langxia]

Interesting site about food 'saftey' in china. Some students made a site collecting press articles about food saftey incidents and made even a map so you can see where most of them happened.

http://www.zccw.info/

[Kenny同志]

pictures of some of the poisonous food

[langxia]

Tody there was an article about tap water in china daily.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-05/09/content_15241913.htm

in short they tell us that the tap water is even less clean than we thought.

[Kenny同志]

in short they tell us that the tap water is even less clean than we thought.

It's hardly surprising.

[imron]

Tody there was an article about tap water in china daily.

Looks like it's gone already.

[icebear]

Tody there was an article about tap water in china daily.

Looks like it's gone already.

Loads fine here.

[imron]

It's loading now for me too. Strange. Before clicking on the link got 404 not found.

[Scandinavian]

That is tap water. In our home we do not use that for drinking or cooking. Has there ever been any reports about the quality of the bottled water? (e.g. the large jugs of mineral water to put in the water coolers) Or the effectiveness of the water-filters that some homes have to make water drinkable. Do they filter off enough to make the water safe?

One of the things that struck me the first times, after moving to China, was in supermarkets, farmers markets or anywhere else where fresh food is sold, the size of vegetables like carrots. They are GIANT, and has to be grown with lots of fertilizer. Obviously a good measure is to wash vegetables well before consuming, however scrubbing on the outside will not remove any chemicals or heavy metals absorbed while the vegetable grew.

[frankwall]

I guess, because of China's massive population, these problems are going to be much more prevalent. Statistics show that the food market in China will be worth 761 billion euro in the future, the highest in the world. When you have the highest food market, you have the most cases of these problems. But like some posters mentioned above - it can happen anywhere if you're unlucky.