Beef offal soaked in strong alkaline liquid in an unlicensed workshop: where is the bottom line of food safety?

A video report on the Sina News app describes what happened. Recently a person with knowledge of the matter reported that a food processing workshop was hidden in a house in the south of Nanjing. After receiving the tip-off, in mid-June, reporters and staff of the market supervision bureau went to the house. Under the eaves on the ground floor they found a number of plastic tubs holding large quantities of meat products, and in a corner of the building a large pile of cardboard outer packaging bearing English markings. Neighbours said the house was a mystery: the door was usually locked and no one could get in. To establish what the house was used for, the reporters and law enforcement officers decided to keep watch.

At last, at half past three in the morning on 17 June 2019, the reporters saw two men in the yard loading large numbers of black plastic bags into a van. After nearly an hour of loading the van left the house. Half an hour later it reached a wholesale market in Nanjing, stopped beside a coach and loaded the black bags on board. The person in charge of the long-distance coach told the reporters that the bags contained beef omasum, beef tripe, beef and similar products, carried to Hangzhou every day. The reporters then followed the goods and found that part of them went to a frozen meat trading market and were sold at stalls there. At the stalls the tripe on sale was white, tender and bright, and five or six yuan a jin cheaper than ordinary tripe.

To establish what the house was used for, and having gathered the relevant evidence, on 19 June 2019 the law enforcement officers organised a raid on the workshop. As soon as they entered the yard the reporters noticed a pungent smell. The processing room on the ground floor was filthy and cluttered, with more than a dozen large tubs holding quantities of beef tripe, beef omasum, aorta and beef tendon, none of the tubs bearing any label.

The reporters then tested the liquid in the tubs and the liquid in which products were stored in the cold room with pH paper, and found it strongly alkaline. In another room, used for raw materials, they found large quantities of beef essence, sodium nitrite and sodium hydroxide. The packaging of the sodium hydroxide was marked as strongly corrosive and harmful to the environment, and quantities of used rubber gloves lay beside it. The officers then inventoried and recorded all the products on site and sealed the processing room and the cold room, and professional testing of the products is to be commissioned.

The relevant law

Staff of the market supervision bureau said on site that food which does not meet the standards of the Food Safety Law, particularly food containing strong acids or strong alkalis or excessive micro-organisms, is certainly harmful to human health. Where sampling reveals that a product contains illegally added substances, the bureau will refer the matter to the public security authorities or another department concerned.

Testing of the products from the house has not yet produced a result, and it is not possible to analyse on the facts whether an offence has been committed. If food safety has indeed been harmed, however, the following provisions indicate the offences that may be involved.

Article 143 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, the offence of producing or selling food that does not meet safety standards, provides that a person who produces or sells food that does not meet food safety standards and is sufficient to cause a serious food poisoning accident or other serious food-borne disease is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or to criminal detention and is also fined; a person who causes serious harm to human health or whose case involves other serious circumstances is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three and not more than seven years and is also fined; and a person whose case causes especially serious consequences is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than seven years or to life imprisonment and is also fined or has his property confiscated.

Article 144 of the Criminal Law, the offence of producing or selling food containing toxic or harmful substances, provides that a person who mixes toxic or harmful non-food raw materials into food that he produces or sells, or who sells food that he knows contains toxic or harmful non-food raw materials, is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years and is also fined; a person who causes serious harm to human health or whose case involves other serious circumstances is sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five and not more than ten years and is also fined; and a person who causes death or whose case involves other especially serious circumstances is punished in accordance with Article 141 of the Law.

The Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China likewise contains corresponding provisions on legal liability, which need not be listed here one by one. Whether the food produced in this case was unlawful, and whether an offence was committed, must still be judged on the test results.

Food is the first necessity of the people, and safety comes first in food

Food is the first necessity of the people, and safety comes first in food. Food safety is a social question that bears on the vital interests of millions of people. In recent years, readier access to information and public sensitivity to food safety have brought ever more unlawful and criminal conduct in this field to light.

Food safety today faces challenges of every kind: industry concentration is low, the system of regulations and standards is incomplete, and supervision at the grassroots is not carried through. The governance of food safety has a long road to travel. Economic self-interest, the low cost of offending, uneven supervision, large gaps in supervision and supervision that falls short may all be causes of food safety problems.

Food safety has a great deal to do with a company's capacity for quality and safety management and with the self-discipline of its industry; the quality inspection departments only supervise, which treats the symptoms and not the cause. What matters in the end is the safety awareness and the moral conscience of those who produce food. A grave lack of honesty and a grave decline in morality are the root of the problem. Only by steadily improving the law and its enforcement, so that those responsible for unlawful and criminal food safety failures receive the punishment they deserve and other unscrupulous producers are deterred, can food safety be effectively secured.