Opinion

Food for thought

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-03-19 10:06

The World Consumer Rights Day on March 15 is an occasion to celebrate and advocate what we as consumers deserve and should thus enjoy. Yet ever since it became a red-character day on the Chinese calendar, stunning revelations have tested our confidence in the things we consume.

This year, they included, but were not limited to, paper napkins made from garbage, animal blood preserved with formaldehyde, and pork containing ractopamine or clenbuterol banned nine years ago.

Authorities responsible for monitoring the market and consumer products were quick to respond, a practice after the melamine scandal, which dealt a nasty blow to the domestic dairy industry.

This time the Ministry of Agriculture was the first to act on pork. It ordered a thorough investigation and formed a special panel for the job. The Ministry of Commerce has followed it up closely. And the government of Henan province, where the tainted pork was detected, has ordered all-round monitoring.

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Although the rest of the departments responsible for food safety, including those charged with public health, industry and commerce, food and drugs, quality inspection and public security, have yet to make an official statement, the initial response appears enough to at least keep more suspicious products from flowing into the market.

Contaminated pork is being ferreted out and withdrawn from store shelves. Pork supplied by suspicious pig farms and slaughterhouses are being subjected to strict special tests. And a number of local government functionaries are facing judicial probe.

Given the authorities' typical pattern of response, evident through the plethora of recent crises involving food safety, we can expect a generally satisfying solution to the exposed cases.

But people's worries are not limited to cases exposed on March 15 alone. They fear that what has been exposed is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are simply too many questions crying for answers: Why should they wait until March 15 to shed light on the dangers we are living with? Why should the media, not the multitude of official agencies entrusted to take care of our safety, always be the first to find out that things have gone badly wrong? What about the rest of the year?

Those caught in the act may be punished. But the legitimate questions that follow are: Are they the only bad guys we are paying for? Will there come a time when we can feel assured that our safety is in the hands of a group of trustworthy people?