In recent years, China has become a major food supplier to Europe. But the low-cost goods are grown in an environment rife with pesticides and antibiotics, disproportionately cited for contamination and subject to an inspection regime full of holes. A recent norovirus outbreak in Germany has only heightened worries.
China, which already sews together our clothes, assembles our smartphones and makes our children’s toys, is now becoming an important food supplier for Germany. Since China, as a low-wage country, doesn’t exactly have a good reputation among consumers, the food industry usually doesn’t mention the origin of the products it sells. Many Germans only realized how much of the food on their plates is harvested and produced in China when thousands of schoolchildren in eastern Germany were afflicted with diarrhea and vomiting two weeks ago in an epidemic thought to have been triggered by Chinese strawberries contaminated with norovirus.
Conversely, China is also selling far more food products to Europe than it used to, as the world’s top exporter recognizes a profitable growth market in Europe. From 2005 to 2010, the value of Chinese food exports worldwide almost doubled, increasing to $41 billion. And Germany, which imported €1.4 billion worth of food from China last year, is becoming an increasingly important customer. Although the country only accounts for about 2 percent of all German food imports, “China has moved into this market with surprising speed and momentum,” says a food industry expert.
The biggest problem with Chinese food products is the local production environment, which includes the excessive use of toxic pesticides for crops and of antibiotics for animals, sometimes coupled with a complete lack of scruples. In 2008, some 300,000 infants in China were harmed by milk and baby formula products adulterated with the chemical melamine. Chinese producers had added the substance, which is especially harmful to the kidneys, to powdered milk.
Chinese producers have also sold peas dyed green, which lost their color when cooked, fake pigs’ ears and cabbage containing carcinogenic formaldehyde. Then there was the cooking oil that was captured in restaurant drains, reprocessed, rebottled and resold. The government newspaper China Daily has even reported on fake eggs.
Wu Heng has risen to become a prominent food-safety advocate in China. Last spring, Wu read about a strange powder that dealers were adding to pork so that they could sell it as beef, which is more expensive. Wu quickly developed an aversion to noodle dishes listed as containing beef.
He put together a website that includes a map pinpointing Chinese food scandals reported in the media. Wu called his website “Throw it Out the Window,” an allusion to former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who is said to have thrown his breakfast sausage out the window in disgust after hearing about the appalling conditions in Chicago’s slaughterhouses.
Animal products are the most questionable, says Zhou Li, a lecturer at Beijing’s Renmin University who studies food safety. Meat is more profitable than vegetables, which only increases the incentive to maximize profits.
Zhou notes that farmers used to eat the same foods they sold. But now that they are aware of the harmful effects of pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics, they still produce a portion of their farm products for the market and a portion for their own families. The only difference is that the food for their families is produced using traditional methods. In fact, many wealthy Chinese have bought their own farms so as not to be dependent on what’s available in supermarkets. There are also reports of special plots of land used to produce food exclusively for senior government officials.
Spiegel has the full article
