Consumers' rights to know should be guaranteed

An official investigation has confirmed that a domestic liquor brand's products contained excessive levels of plasticizer. Experts say it could pose risks to human's immune and reproductive systems.

The Hunan provincial administration of quality and technological supervision said the investigation results show that liquor samples from Jiugui Liquor Co., Ltd. contained 1.04 mg of dibutyl phthalate (DBP) per kg, one kind of plasticizer.

The figure is much higher than the 0.3 mg per kg standard, a regulatory limit set by the Ministry of Health in June 2011.

It has been 17 months since the China Alcoholic Drinks Association (CADA) knew liquor products contained plasticizer, according to its own statement on Monday.

However, the public only got to know the fact until a media report unraveled the Jiugui incident on Monday.

As a social intermediary, an industry association should serve as a bridge linking consumers and enterprises. As the CADA did not tell consumers what was happening, the public's right to be informed was badly damaged. At a time when worries about food safety, one of the biggest concerns for Chinese consumers, are high.

Information transparency is key to the food industry's development. If people have lost confidence, the industry is doomed to fail.

It reminds the Chinese people of the milk scandal in 2008.

Until now, foreign brands still take the lion's share of China's baby formula market. This is because Chinese dairy producers are feeling the impact of the melamine-tainted milk scandal. The incident killed at least six babies and left 300,000 ill across the country.

China's dairy industry is suffering because it has lost consumers' trust. They knew the toxic milk was being sold several months before the scandal was exposed. Neither the company nor the local government disclosed the right information to the public in time.

It is obvious that the liquor association did not learn a lesson from it. Its response on Monday did not alleviate people's doubts over the safety of liquor but caused more scares among them. The plasticizer crisis has spread across the whole industry.

The liquor index of China's Shanghai Stock Exchange plummeted by 4.58 percent on Monday and some 32.78 billion yuan (5.2 billion U.S. dollars) market value of liquor-related stocks evaporated. Jiugui liquor products have been taken off some supermarket shelves. The association said it issued an internal notice last December, calling for its member companies not to use plastics in the production, storage and sales of the liquor after problems emerged in June 2011. But it never gave warnings to consumers.

If the association scrutinized the industry since last June and made public their actions in time, the whole sector would not be suffering so much now.

In the long run, an industry association can not only stand for the sector but it also needs to serve the consumers. Without consumers' trust and support, no companies can thrive.

The association should be brave to admit the problems to the public, investigate the cause and help companies rectify problems. Those companies who violate the laws and ignore people's health interests should be known to the public.

Plasticizer not being included in the authorities' quality inspection items should not be an excuse for the association to fulfill its responsibilities. Setting up an industrial standard, which adapts to or even higher than the national standard, should be top of the association's agenda.

It was a welcome action that the Jiugui Co., Ltd. took the initiative to send the 50-percent alcohol distilled liquor to the provincial quality control authority for inspection on Monday. Although the result was not ideal, it gave consumers the right information and room to rectify the problem.

Information transparency of enterprises, industry associations and quality control authorities should put the standard of products under the public's supervision and this is key to the sound development of the food industry.