City aims to pull food safety out of the gutter

Food businesses will be suspended and could face heavy fines for violating kitchen waste disposal rules, according to a food safety regulation draft proposed by Beijing authorities on Friday, which aims to break the illegal supply chain of "gutter oil."

The draft, which is open for public comments until April 25 on the website of the Legal Affairs Office of the Beijing Municipal Government, proposes tightening the rules on how waste oil must be treated. It prohibits the collection or transportation of waste oil from restaurants without a license.

Previous municipal regulations contained no specific rules for gutter oil, the term used for reprocessed cooking oil, illegally produced from waste oil collected from restaurants.

According to the draft law, catering service providers, including restaurants, fast food outlets, beverage stores and canteens, which fail to abide by the regulation to deal with the waste oil, may face a fine of up to 50,000 yuan ($7,930) or be ordered to cease trading altogether in serious cases.

Fan Zhihong, a food safety expert at China Agricultural University, told the Global Times that the new draft imposes harsher punishments for food safety crimes, which is a big change from the previous regulations.

"It increases the power to punish violators, which will also serve as a warning to other potential lawbreakers," she said, adding that those who violate the law will face more scrutiny if they wish to open another food related business.

The draft stipulates that legal representatives or direct supervisors will be banned in perpetuity from investing in or being engaged in the food industry if they are involved in food safety crimes. Those whose business license is cancelled will be barred from the industry for five years, an increase of two years.

"The new draft also points out that problematic food will be destroyed by the food providers [restaurants or stores] instead of being recalled by manufacturers. This move will improve the supervision of withdrawing tainted food," Fan noted.

Workers in a Shanghai factory added old buns, which had been returned to the factory by retailers, to their mixes in order to create "new" buns, CCTV reported in April last year.

Other highlights of the new draft include standardized training for employees in the food industry and a ban on the use of Nitrite, a chemical used to make dyes and preserve meats, which can be harmful to health.

"Everybody is happy to see those changes, but I'm not optimistic about the implementation. And we still lack thorough supervision of food production," Fan said.

Giving gutter oil as an example, Fan said the most effective way to remove it from the supply chain is at the source, restaurants.

"But Beijing has more than 20,000 restaurants, so it's not possible to take samples of the oil from every restaurant for tests, which is a big challenge for the supervision and enforcement departments," Fan said.

Local residents approve of the new rules, and hope they can be enforced.

"The harsher the punishments, the better it is to ensure consumers' safety. I hope authorities can really strictly implement the regulation, otherwise it means nothing," said Bai Xue, a Chaoyang district resident.

Meizhou Dongpo, a Sichuan-style chain restaurant, sends staff to check if waste oil is used in their kitchens.

"We aren't allowed to use gutter oil, and we discard used oil. But when I worked in a small restaurant, it might reuse oil," said a chef surnamed Li from the Qingnian Lu branch of the restaurant, in Chaoyang district.

Several food safety scandals surfaced in 2011, such as gutter oil and cancer-causing additive clenbuterol added to pig feed to produce lean meat.

The Xinhua News Agency reported last week that police had arrested over 100 suspects for making a new type of gutter oil in a new food safety drive.