Food Safety Must be Our Top Priority!

Catching up on our post-Chunjie reading, we came across this frightening post on the seemingly intractable problem of food safety in China by our favorite food writer and author of Beijing Eats, Eileen Wen Mooney. The post discusses a thesis by Harvard student Leslie Marie Grothaus and a book by Chinese journalist Zhou Qing entitled What Kind of Heaven?, described as an in-depth and unsettling look at food safety problems in China.

Leslie Grothaus’ thesis was written in order “to explore what needs to change here in order for meaningful food safety reform to take place.” Grothaus formulated six steps she believes must be taken for reform to take place, including increasing transparency, creating a clearer legal structure and taking a stronger stand against corruption. Mooney reproduces the full list of recommendations in her post.

Zhou Qing’s book What Kind of Heaven? called for the public to be better educated about what they eat: “The people regard food as their Heaven, so food safety must be our top priority!” In an earlier in-depth post on Zhou's work, Mooney wrote: "Zhou Qing, an investigative reporter, quotes Zhong Nanshan, a very outspoken doctor during the SARS epidemic, as saying that 'The Chinese people are committing a form of slow mass suicide.' Zhou said uncontrolled greed had caused a food disaster of unimaginable proportions. 'I can only warn you never to go in a restaurant.'"

Strong stuff. Although it was published a few years ago, Zhou's book appears to have had little impact if the melamine milk scandal is anything to go by.

The full text of Qing’s book, which details a disturbingly long history of food-related incidents in China, is available in English here.