By
DAVID BARBOZAPublished: May 18, 2007
Weeks after tainted Chinese pet food ingredients killed and sickened thousands of dogs and cats in the United States, this country is facing growing international pressure to prove that its food exports are safe to eat.
But simmering beneath the surface is a thornier problem that worries Chinese officials: how to assure the world that this is not a nation of counterfeits and that “Made in China” means well made.
Already, the contamination has produced one of the largest
pet food recalls in American history, heightening global fears about the quality and safety of China’s agricultural products. And evidence has also shown that China exported fake drug ingredients, threatening to undermine the credibility of another booming export.
“This isn’t an international crisis yet, but if they don’t do something about it quickly, it will be,” said David Zweig, a China specialist who teaches at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “The question is whether it spills over and ‘Made in China’ becomes known as ‘Buyer Beware.’ ”
With contamination known to have spread to feed for livestock and fish, some of America’s biggest food companies, like
Kraft Foods, are lobbying the United States government to press China to improve its food safety measures.
Kraft,
Kellogg and other food companies have said they are reviewing their food safety procedures and upgrading equipment. These executives worry that another scare involving China could set off a consumer backlash against Chinese or foreign imports and reverse a trend that has made large food makers increasingly dependent on processed ingredients from developing countries.
Experts also say doubts about the quality of China’s food shipments and worries about its fake drugs could affect other exports if buyers begin to find safety problems or other product flaws.
Indeed, the frequency of recalls of Chinese imports has risen in recent years, according to the
Consumer Product Safety Commission.
For instance, two weeks ago,
Wal-Mart Stores announced a nationwide recall of baby bibs made in China after some of those bibs tested positive for high levels of lead.
Just this week, the Cardinal Distributing Company recalled 300,000 children’s rings with dice or horseshoes, and Spandrel Sales and Marketing recalled about 200,000 necklaces, bracelets and rings. In both cases, the jewelry, which was made in China and sold in American vending machines, had high levels of lead.
Many consumers have also told pet food makers that they want goods that are free of any ingredients from China, according to the Pet Food Institute.
At stake for China is more than $30 billion a year in agricultural and drug exports to Asia, Europe and North America. For multinationals, not to mention the smaller American importers, the stakes are much higher.
The current scare may prompt changes in China. The former head of the nation’s food and drug safety watchdog is now on trial in Beijing, accused of accepting bribes and failing to curb the growing market in fake and dangerous medicines.
Still, few trade experts believe that China’s export boom is going to slow anytime soon. China’s shipments of vegetables and seafood have been soaring in recent years. And many importers say they would rather work with Chinese companies to raise safety levels than switch suppliers. China is also negotiating with the United States and the
European Union to have them accept Chinese poultry products. That move is opposed by American and European poultry farmers, who are using the pet food scandal to press their case.
“If you bring chicken in here from China, you don’t know what that chicken ate, and I think that’s dangerous,” said Lucius Adkins, president of the United Poultry Growers Association.
Indeed, certain industries will face greater challenges, starting with feed processing, where two Chinese companies were found to have intentionally mixed an industrial chemical called melamine with wheat flour to heighten protein readings artificially.
Pharmaceuticals need to overcome even higher hurdles, particularly since last year when 100 people died in Panama after ingesting fake ingredients used in cough syrup.
“We’re now learning some of the dirty secrets behind this fast-growing economy,” said Wang Fei-ling, a professor of international affairs at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. “And the dirty secret is they’re cutting corners in making things.”
In some places around the world, reaction has been swift. In Europe, food safety authorities are testing all Chinese protein imports for melamine. In South Korea, the CJ Corporation, one of the country’s largest food and feed makers, said last week that it was recalling 42 tons of wheat gluten from China even though the products had not tested positive for melamine.
“The major effect of this seems to me that the Chinese have been alerted that they should get their house in order,” says Dr. M. D. Merbis, an economist at the Center for World Food Studies in Amsterdam.
Some Chinese exports are feeling the pinch.
“A Spanish company came to visit us and was planning to buy our product,” said Sun Hong, chief executive of the Sanfu Biochemical Company, a rice protein maker in Hangzhou.
“We were going to strike a deal at the end of the month. But after what happened in the U.S. they haven’t even replied to our e-mail yet.”
Experts say that to restore confidence, China needs to confront the issue and not be seen as covering up or delaying the release of information, which seemed to be the case during recent outbreaks of
severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and
bird flu.
In similar fashion, after the initial news about melamine came out, China denied having shipped any wheat gluten to the United States and one official said melamine could not have harmed pets.
Only after an international storm surrounded the case in mid-April, and Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, publicly rebuked China for its response to the investigation did China fully cooperate with American regulators.
Now, in a turnabout, China has banned melamine from food and feed proteins and announced nationwide inspections.
“You have to realize,” said Professor Wenran Jiang at the University of Alberta, “China is going through a radical transformation and it’s hard to manage. The state just doesn’t have the expertise to keep up with these things.”
The problems here are compounded by strict controls over the media that keep the public in the dark about food and drug safety violations, experts say.
Most Chinese are still unaware of the pet food scandal in the United States because the story has largely been ignored by the Chinese news media. Several Chinese editors contacted in recent weeks said they were ordered by the government propaganda department not to report on the case.
“This has been a key,” says Steve Tsang, who teaches at Oxford. “The government has the ability to censor and manage the flow of the news.”
Hoping to investigate why melamine contaminated so much pet food, investigators from the
Food and Drug Administration spent two weeks in China this month. They said the Chinese government was cooperative.
But last week F.D.A. officials acknowledged that agency investigators had no opportunity to carry out their own work here. The Chinese government had already done it.
“We visited the two facilities but there’s essentially nothing to be found in that they are currently closed down, not operating,” Walter Batts, an F.D.A. official, said during a recent news conference.
United States investigators were not allowed to interview the managers of the Chinese pet feed companies accused of violations, even though they were being held in detention centers.
After United States investigators left, China issued a statement asking the United States not to punish other exporters of food ingredients for the misdeeds of a few rogue companies, and not to let this become a trade quarrel.
Experts say China would like to close the door on the episode. And so would America’s biggest food companies like Kraft, which is supporting an organization that is pushing to strengthen the F.D.A.
In a statement issued this week, Kraft Foods said, “We’re also lending our support to the Coalition for a Stronger F.D.A. and industry colleagues in urging Congress for substantial funding increases to the F.D.A. for the agency’s food oversight functions.”
But many experts say the real challenge lies in China — in ensuring that its aggressive entrepreneurs are tamed and that its inspectors can better monitor the contents of exports now valued at more than $1 trillion a year.
If they cannot, some analysts say there could be a shift in consumer attitudes toward products “Made in China.”
“This kind of thing is like leaves settling on the forest floor,” said Robert A. Kapp, a longtime China specialist and former president of the U.S.-China Business Council. “They gradually accumulate and change one’s impression over time.”
F.D.A. Says Fish Are Untainted
Farmed fish that may have eaten food with imported Chinese ingredients show no traces of contamination and should be safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday.
The two fish farms that used the feed kept their fish off the market until the tests could be completed.
Dr. David W. K. Acheson, assistant commissioner for food protection, said fish being raised at Kona Blue in Hawaii and American Gold Seafoods in Washington State tested negative for the chemical melamine.
The questionable feed was also sold to 196 fish hatcheries. Because those fish are small and the feed has been recalled, Dr. Acheson said the F.D.A. believed that there was no longer any public health concern.
On Tuesday, the F.D.A. cleared for market 56,000 pigs given feed that included scraps of pet food contaminated with melamine.
