Gelatin firm accused of reusing waste

A gelatin manufacturer in Northwest China's Qinghai province has been accused of using garbage and food waste to produce edible gelatin and drug capsules.

The Xining-based Qinghai Gelatin Company has been buying large quantities of waste bones from local garbage recycling centers and restaurants, according to a report on 21cbh.com, the website of the 21st Century Business Herald.

Qinghai Gelatin, a listed company, applied to stop trading on Tuesday following an emergency meeting on Monday night. The company told China Daily it would not grant any interviews during suspension of trading.

An insider quoted in the 21cbh.com report said that the gelatin producer was mainly purchasing raw materials from slaughterhouses but it would also buy waste bones from trash recycling centers and restaurants, if the quantities were large enough.

"Less gelatin would be obtained if bones were boiled, so those bones are always cheaper," said the insider.

Qinghai Gelatin produces around 5,000 tons of gelatin each year, of which 70 percent is used for medical products and 20 percent to make food additives.

The company's 2008 annual report showed that it needed 36,000 tons of bones to make 4,500 tons of gelatin.

The company's output reached 6,000 tons in 2011, so 48,000 tons of bones would be needed, said the 21cbh.com report.

The firm's 2011 annual report revealed that its top five raw material suppliers only provided about 22 percent of its total demand. The company said that it was buying materials from other suppliers in Sichuan, Guizhou and Gansu provinces.

Liu Wei, a medical industry consultant with the Shenzhen-based CIC Industry Research Center, said if sources of raw material were too scattered, it could lead to a lack of quality control and use of substandard materials.

"Using garbage and food waste to produce edible gelatin and drug capsules is not common, but such a large demand for bones would make manufacturers take risks," he said.

Before it suspended trading on Tuesday, the price of Qinghai Gelatin's shares had soared at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since last Monday, when other capsule manufacturers were exposed for using chromium-contaminated industrial gelatin.

Li Mingrun, a researcher with the Tianjin institute of medical and pharmaceutical sciences, said garbage and food waste should not be used to make edible gelatin or drug capsules.

"Even if they were disinfected, their use in making edible gelatin should also be questioned, because both inorganic and organic ingredients would be altered by the process," he said.

According to the website of Qinghai provincial environmental protection department, Qinghai Gelatin has been fined many times after complaints about pollution.