Wake up call
Despite the declaration by Coca-Cola, media reports raised the question of whether the mainland’s safety regulations are outdated.
The Coke Zero additive incident has demonstrated that the beverage giant is handling its business with care in Taiwan, yet remains inattentive to its products on the Chinese mainland. Such double standards reflect the fact that food safety standards on the mainland are low, CRI Online commented in a report on Monday.
Nanfang Daily also pointed out in a report that the presence of the methylparaben made the loopholes in safety regulations conspicuous, further troubling consumers already worried about food safety issues.
As such, the "Zero issue" becomes another wake up call amid intense discussion about the country's current dairy standards, which were recently denounced as some of the "worst in the world" by Wang Dingmian, the chairman of the Guangzhou Dairy Association.
Food safety standards need review and improvement, which can be achieved through comparison with other countries, one web user said.
The Ministry of Health said it has started an investigation of the preservative.
Food industry not ready for change
The series of food safety scandals that have spread across the country beg the question, why does the mainland have slacker standards than Taiwan? And when will similar standards be established here?
Before hazarding a guess, one must first consider that China did not have a national food safety standard at all until the late 1980s. And even now, they leave much to be desired.
"Food safety standards at the moment should be called food hygiene standards, since they only checks hygienic conditions," said Prof. Tang Shuze, chairman of the food safety committee at the China Association of Animal Product Processing Research.
China's food safety regulations were underdeveloped until the last five years, during which the Law on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products took effect in 2006 and the Food Safety Law took effect in 2009.
Despite those efforts, China's food safety standards are still far lower than Europe and Japan. They also fall below standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), a body established in 1963 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
During the last 30 years, the CAC has become a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations related to food, food production and food safety.
As of 2009, the CAC had established over 8,000 food safety standards, 3,274 residue limitations for pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and 1,005 evaluations of food additives.
According to a report in Southern Weekend, in the past 30 years some of China's food safety standards were only reviewed after 10 years, while some had not been reviewed in more than 20 years, even though national regulations state that these standards must be revised within five years.
The European standard for limitation of pesticide residue, for example, is only 2.2 percent of what China allows, the report said.
However, industry experts say it is unrealistic for safety standards to be raised as high as those in Japan, Europe, or by the CAC.
The dispute is actually a battle of interests, since many companies in the food industry will be eliminated from the market if standards are raised, said Qiu Baochang, a lawyer with the China Consumers' Association.
The current state of the industry should be brought into consideration when it comes to establishing higher standards, according to Wang Qiang, a member of the State Food Industry Standardization Commission.
Europe tends to have higher standards because it imports large amount of products each year. The US, on the other hand, has lower standards to protect its own products, Wang said.
Undoubtedly the old standards must be raised, yet the new ones must be "reachable" by companies, said Yan Li, a standardization engineer.
