Soy sauce to return to shelves soon

A local soy sauce-maker said Wednesday that it expects to put its centuries-old product back on store shelves in the city by June, after it was ordered to halt production last year due to concerns raised by inspectors over its traditional production methods.

Qian Wanlong was forced to suspend production some 10 months ago, after its dark soy sauce was recognized by the State as an intangible cultural heritage in 2008. The city's quality control watchdog said the traditional fermentation process used to make the sauce clashed with modern food safety practices.

After nearly a year of tweaking production methods at its factory, which mainly included the creation of an isolated area for fermenting soy as requested by inspectors, some 1,200 bottles of soy sauce should be ready for local shops to sell in about three months, said Luo Liansheng, the company's administrative director.

"We've improved our production methods to catch up with modern standards, while keeping our ancient soy sauce recipe intact," he told the Global Times Wednesday.

Luo said that the cordoned off fermentation area meets food safety regulations, while negating contamination risks to jars of fermenting soy, covered only by lids made of bamboo, which were previously kept outside.

"The new facility provides better sanitation, while allowing us to make soy sauce just like our ancestors did," he said. "We're an old family business, so that's important to us."

Huang Xiaoqiang, deputy chief of the city's technical and quality supervision bureau, said Wednesday that the amendments have been checked and appear to be in good working order.

"It took some time to come up with a feasible solution that would satisfy public health interests and a traditional means of production," he told the Global Times Wednesday. "This setup works for both while ensuring that the product is safe for consumption."

Qian Wanlong is further expected to catch up with its previous annual production of some 150,000 bottles by the end of next year to give the company a way back into domestic and international markets, said Luo.

It is hoped that restarting production will help the company start to recover from the some 3 million yuan ($474,000) still paid to workers during the suspended productions, and the some 8 million yuan worth of overseas orders lost from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan over the past 10 months, he added.