A Familiar Taint

Hundreds of people, including soldiers and athletes, have been poisoned by the lean-meat pork powder every year. Why has its use not been stopped, despite warnings and prohibitions?

The reason is the so-called collective responsibility system in China's food-safety administration. For instance, a pig is managed by eight separate departments, from the time of its birth to the time of its sale to the public. The breeding procedure is managed and controlled by the agriculture department, so officials there can collect fees for feed production. Epidemic prevention for pigs is managed by the board of health, which collects fees but hasn't handled epidemic prevention well.

When the pig grows up, its butchering is managed by the board of industry and commerce, which doesn't care much about the quality of the meat but rather about charging fees. When problems occur, those departments or boards pass the buck to each other.

This kind of cross-management system has caused big problems; nobody has taken responsibility for food safety. The reasons why officials in different departments scramble for the power to control the pig business are because they want to get their claws on as much money as possible, for their own benefit.

The most frightful thing is that they, as chief food-safety managers, sometimes benefit by discovering problems with the food that they're administrating. For instance, when pet food exported to the U.S. from China was discovered with problems related to melamine, and noticed by higher-level administrators, local officials took advantage of the situation to ask for more funds from their bosses.

Unfortunately, they did not apply the funds toward improving their industry, but rather for their own convenience. One might purchase a luxury car for the office at about $40,000, but spend less than $3,000 to buy a food safety-inspection kit—and then put the inspection kit into the car and drive the so-called "Food Safety Inspection Vehicle" around. It looks like they function effectively, but in fact, they don't care much for food safety. It's very hard to find officials who spend even 60 percent of funds dedicated to food safety on their real business!

This is a situation in which a pig isn't administered very well by up to eight different departments! We have reason to conclude that if a group of officials cannot manage a pig very well, they have a lot to be ashamed about because they're supported by our tax payers!

The key reason for so many big problems concerning food safety is the system of bureaucracy, which caused the collapse of the former Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist Party faces a great challenge. If it cannot reform its political system, it may follow in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union.

— Translated by Dr. Wang Hanchuan

© 2008