Food fears spike as new scandal dogs companies

Authorities' credibility was again challenged after two detection results on spirulina products from the State drug regulator were reported to be contrary due to public relations tactics from companies involved.

The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) released the detection result of a batch of healthcare products on February 29 and March 5, showing the name list of 13 enterprises that were found to produce spirulina products with excessive content of lead and arsenic.

However, on March 30, the SFDA released another detection result, on which 12 spirulina product enterprises on the previous list disappeared, the Economic Information Daily reported.

According to the report, some people from the problematic enterprises said their U-turn from "unqualified" to "qualified" enterprises is attributed to their public relations tactics toward the authority.

It was reported that the SFDA applied the standard of "2.0 mg/kg lead in the spirulina products" in the latest result release while applying the "0.5 mg/kg" standard in the result release earlier.

The SFDA could not be reached yesterday.

The report said procuratorate organs in Beijing have started investigating SFDA officials.

Dong Jinshi, a food safety expert in Beijing, told the Global Times yesterday that since almost all the spirulina products are troches, the standard on the lead content should be 0.5 mg/kg, according to current regulations.

He attributed the chaos of the food safety standards to the fact that too many departments were involved in working out the standards.