Globalization and the Food Safety Regulation in China
China — also known as the “food paradise” — is widely been promoted by the mass media with imageries of rich culinary traditions and vast regional varieties in cuisines. The Chinese documentary A Bite of China, for example, uses a combination of food porn and nostalgia to showcase China’s distinctive food culture and the big hit has been both at home and abroad. In reality, however, the Chinese food regulatory system is far from ideal. As strongly criticized by a Chinese journalist, “for more than a decade, China has earned a reputation as one of the world’s worst food-safety offenders.” The illegal and carcinogenic chemical additive egg case in 2006; the melamine-adulterated infant formula milk case in 2008; and the repackaged expired beef and chicken case in 2014 which involved a few of the world’s largest fast-food chains including McDonald, KFC, Burger King, and Starbucks; these real-life examples more than enough to demonstrate the impact of food safety crises in China at the global level. Food safety issues have further escalated after the COVID-19 pandemic struck China, particularly in the processing, packing, and transportation of food products across the nation and acorss the globe. In a world system as interdependent as the contemporary one, food hygienic problems are not only a threat to China’s social stability and cultural identity but also an adverse public health repercussion on a global scale. Some say that the food manufacturing industry should be regulated under the same international food safety standards because this will greatly help improve countries, like China, with large populations that suffer from food hygiene problems. However, I believe that the way to deal with the poor food safety tracking system in China is co-regulation between the government and local food sanitation institutes, as this will help authorities keep track of small businesses and food safety violations in the markets that the government alone can not control.
With foodborne incidents marking the headlines of news and media on a regular basis, food scandals are not new for Chinese citizens. According to research conducted by UK-China Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network, China is responsible for a significant proportion of the global health and economic costs associated with consuming unsafe food. According to statistics collected by The World Bank Group in 2021, the cost of food-related incidents is “estimated at over US$30 billion per year, almost 50 percent of the total economic burden of foodborne diseases in Asia,” calculated in proportion to the Human Capital Index (HCI) in China. The most recent food scandal occurred just last month when the World Consumer Rights Day gala in China revealed incidents of consumer rights violations in a variety of industries, including food safety. In particular, a video of a company named Hunan Chaqi Vegetable Co Ltd’s production process for pickled cabbage went viral on social media platforms, given that the company is in partnership with one of China’s most favored instant noodle production businesses. In the video, workers were stepping on the pickled cabbage, some wearing slippers and others barefoot, to marinate and flavor the cabbage. Workers were smoking during this production stage, and the camera even captured one of the workers throwing his cigarette stub into the cabbage. Most significantly, the media also unveiled that the pickled cabbage produced for domestic sales was regulated under a drastically different system from that for export sales. The exported cabbages are fermented in its own fermentation tank and later cleanly processed and free of impurities, while the ones sold to Chinese citizens are fermented outdoors in a pit with workers stumping on cabbage bare feet.
The rise of global food chains, as well as the import and export of food products, has resulted in mutual interdependence for countries all over the world. Due to China’s growing engagement in the global trading market, foodborne incidents are no longer only a domestic issue in China — it is now also a global issue. This is important to think about because all producers, regulators, and consumers, regardless of the country in which they reside, should have the responsibility for preventing food-related issues. The difference in food safety regulation across different countries has even constructed a dynamism that encourages crafty manufacturers to, by exploiting the differences in law, put their citizens at severe health risks in order to maximize profit.
The reasons for a failing regulation structure in China are complicated and difficult to break down, as it “intertwines with China’s regulatory design, political institution, food industry structure and development, rule of law deficit, and corruption problems, to name a few” (Lin 37). To begin with, the local governments’ technical and regulatory capacity is insufficient for the decentralized food industry structure in China. Unlike the US and other several European countries where the food sector is heavily concentrated and consolidated, nearly eighty percent of China’s half-million food organizations are “cottage industries” with less than ten employees” (Becker 14). Sneaky, small-scale businesses can easily change their names, relocate to a new location, and hire new workers to construct a different, brand new product. The legal and economic risks that promote the corporation’s own supply chain regulation and social responsibility are almost minimal. Furthermore, even with a simple traceability system, locating responsible parties in the event of a food safety issue is challenging, which helps to explain why the problem remains even as Chinese officials continue to crack down on unlicensed food producers and contaminated food. The national system to control is essentially weakened by the lack of technical and institutional capacity to “control and ensure compliance, in terms of inadequately trained personnel, insufficient financial resources, and unqualified laboratories.” Thus, pinpointing the source of food contamination and taking reactions against hygienic issues has been incredibly challenging due to the complexity of food supply chains, the lack of a proper tracking system, as well as the flat industry structure.
Further, the most important factor for combating China’s food hygiene is not further law enactment, but rather stronger law enforcement. In fact, what is going on now in the current Chinese society is that what the law requires people to do is not implemented and enforced in practice. It has widely been argued by critics that unsafe food cases like the melamine-tainted infant milk problem is practically uncontrollable due to a lack of laws and controls in China. However, the underlying truth is that simply making legislation and enacting regulations is insufficient. By this, I do not mean that creating laws and strict regulations is unnecessary. In fact, according to the White Paper on China’s Food Quality and Safety issued in 2007 by the State Council Information Office, “China has a complete law regime and a good regulatory environment for controlling food imports and exports and ensuring the safety and quality of food products. The total number of food-related laws, regulations, and regulatory documents by government agencies at the ministerial level or above amounts to more than 800 instruments.” There are approximately 3,000 laws, regulations, rules, and standards in China if all forms of food standards are included. Therefore, the actual remedy is not to come up with stricter laws, but actually have organizations obey the law as they are required.
Some critics have long argued that the Chinese government is not taking action in ameliorating food contamination and economic adulteration. In fact, they are wrong because, while the Chinese national government is making efforts in exercising “more rigorous surveillance and monitoring throughout the country,” the provincial local governments are generally “less organized, less comprehensive, and less effective” (Lin 38) when it comes to the management of food safety operations. However, the Government of Shenzhen, the “Chinese economic and tech hub,” makes a successful step forward towards better food safety after being pressured by the citizen’s growing awareness of food contamination. Having the law regime, Shenzhen is a perfect example of how the authorities can perceptively manage food safety violations by taking better control of cottage industries. Since the main cause of poor regulation was due to scarcity of public sector resources, the city has adopted a model of co-regulation in 2015 that required the “public and private sectors working together to deliver safer food at lower cost” (Garcia Martinez et al., 2007; Rouvière & Caswell, 2012). Instead of inputting the time and effort into end-product examination, the government was able to amalgamate the scarce resources of various food sanitation organizations to improve the gross regulatory system by collaborating with organizations such as the Shenzhen Institute of Standards and Technology and the Shenzhen Academy of Metrology and Quality Inspection. The successful experiences of Shenzhen showed that once the co-regulation system was formed, it needed to be supported at the onset by the regulatory authorities with finance, propaganda, and legitimacy.
On the international level, the China Food Safety Improvement project is a global approach that has been taken to advance China’s food safety and improve the quality of exported food products. The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors granted a loan of US $400 million dollars in March 2021, targeting to advance the social issue at a national and global scope. The project’s goal is to help local farms and food businesses of all scopes to better comply with regulations and meet food safety certification requirements, encourage eco-friendly food packaging, and the revampment of public infrastructures for water, waste, and pollution management. “By taking an integrated and risk-based approach, consistent with global good practices, this project can help China mitigate the public health risks and reduce the economic and environmental costs associated with unsafe food production, processing, and trading practices,” the World Bank Country Director for China notes, “Because China is a major food exporter and a hotspot for the emergence of food-borne diseases, the project carries important global benefits,” quoted by Food Safety News. The project will enhance China’s food safety practices, implementation, and adherence along with several value chains, including seafood, pork, fruits, and vegetables, in line with international best practices. Consequently, this will better manipulate the food production process by enforcing strict scientific and empirical food safety standards at domestic and international levels. Such a transformation required China to quickly catch up with international safety standards, as well as a global approach to food safety that transcends borders, governments, and industries.
To conclude, all producers, regulators, and consumers from all over the world have responsibilities for preventing food-related issues on an international level as the food trading system today is so interconnected that the scope of the issue is no longer a national one. Despite the fact that the Chinese government has adopted stricter regulatory measures and established the State Administration for Market Regulation, the current food hygiene in China is still a huge weakness despite the rich Chinese culture for food. Co-regulation has been established and is increasingly being advocated as an important regulatory instrument due to asymmetric knowledge, a lack of regulatory resources, and consumer lobbying. In general, the emphasis on punishment is shifting towards supporting prevention, and supervision is shifting to the promotion of co-governance. A bright future can be expected as the Chinese regulatory system raises the standard in line with the international food safety standards.
Citations
Ching-Fu Lin, “Outsource Power, Import Safety: Challenges and Opportunities of the
U.S.-China Food Safety Regulatory Cooperation,” Food and Drug Law Journal, Vol. 72 №1, 2017. pp. 32–52.
International Bank of Reconstruction and Development. The World Bank, 25 Mar. 2021,
www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/03/25/advancing-china-s-food-safety. Accessed 20 April 2022.
Liu, Zhe, et al. “Food safety governance in China: From supervision to coregulation,” Food
Science and Nutrition, Vol. 7, №12, 2019. Pp. 4127–4139.
Wenqian, Zhu. Regulator Highlights Food Safety. China Daily, 17 Mar. 2022,
www.global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/17/WS62328a85a310fd2b29e5168c.html. Accessed 20 April 2022.
The China-UK Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN), 1 Mar. 2021,
www.sainonline.org/pages/News/China%20Agri-food%20News%20Digest%20032021.pdf . Accessed 22 April 2022.
