As many as 17 bureaucracies have overlapping responsibilities in just the food and drug sphere, and they jealously guard their power. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine have all vied for monitoring roles.Americans had to wait over half a century after the publication of "The Jungle" before our own FDA gained the power to regulate pharmaceuticals. Unhindered by a robust democracy, China has the ability to quickly and radically overhaul its own agencies. The government is even taking the state-run media off its normally tight leash to promote reform.The reason: They wanted to collect license fees and fines to supplement their measly budgets. No less significantly, inspectors and their bosses could collect bribes in exchange for favors.
"It came down to turf warfare between departments," said Roger Skinner, a retired British regulator who advised the Chinese government on improving food safety on behalf of the World Health Organization. "If they can't enforce, they will lose revenue."
Realizing they had created a muddle of competing bureaucracies, top leaders in 2003 formed the State Food and Drug Administration, named after its American counterpart, that on paper had "super-ministerial authority" to coordinate all the others that monitored the politically sensitive food and drug sphere.
The state-run media has been given unusual latitude to expose shoddy goods. One of the most popular shows on China Central Television, "Weekly Quality Report," investigates accidents, poisonings and cheap fakes. Recent topics include defective motorcycle helmets, a faux rabies vaccine, faulty tires and toxic food additives.If only that pot of sunshine came as an English podcast. At the end of the day, we're confident that the Chinese will reform their bureaucracy for the sake of satisfying American companies. What do you think? Tell us in the comments.
Can China Reform Itself? [NYT]
(AP Photo/Color China Photo)
Given a sufficiently long enough defintion of "day", sure. Perhaps when they change governments. In the meantime, given that they are completely corrupt, you'll see nothing but lipservice given to the reform of food and consumer product safely. Yeah, yeah. There'll be (govt. controlled) press coverage. There'll be the occasional show trial. But so long as the money keeps flowing to the govt. to look the other way - they will!
Did you know that none of your four points has anything to do with whether or not China can 'tame the Chinese Poison Train'.
A. What's wrong with eating dogs? I'm sure you've had hot dogs and chicken 'nuggets' before. Do you know what parts of animals and what types of chemicals are used to keep these gound up parts of god knows what together? Atleast with eating a dog, you know whether you're eating a German Shepherd or Mutt.
B. Read 'Fast Food Nation', chances are if you've ever visited any fast food restaurant in your life, you've eaten some form of feces.
C. I'm sure pound for pound, chinese people are healthier than American's and lighter too to boot.
D. And?
]]>"looks like the fat americans are bored again and they're gonna get into it with china next."
"si amigo, but it should help us sell them more food."
]]>I was examining the label on a nice looking bag of salted cashews, but the only origin info I could find was "Distributed by So-and-So Co., Morristown, New Jersey." What does that mean? Why don't they have to tell where the cashews are FROM? Anyone know?
]]>Xenophobia rules!
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Plenty of people have cute little rabbits or fish as pets and it is socially acceptable to eat those (and I understand people don't normally have tuna as a pet). You shouldn't be so close-minded, while growing up overseas in a military family two of my favorite foods were horse and dog.
]]>"US exporters - an increasingly rare breed to start!"
Except they're not - US merchandise exports have grown nearly 7%/year since 2001.
]]>...Good for them. That we aren't really self-sufficient enough to do likewise should be a wakeup call.
10 or 20 years ago, RC2 Corp (Thomas the Tank merchandiser), Hill Products (Pet Food) and many others would have gone out of business, or at best on life support, in the wake of revelations of such widespread contaimination. Now we just shrug, and return to our regularly scheduled "Airport Sippie Cup of Doom: Crisis on the Tarmac".
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This is an economic issue which has absolutely nothing to do with the government, Chinese or American. Higher-quality products are more expensive. "Stopping the Chinese poison train" is as simple as not buying dirt-cheap Chinese imports.
]]>The "Food Protectors" of this country are in the business of looking out for the corporations, NOT in protecting the American people.
]]>You mean like pretty much 70% of the rest of the world....
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a) still eats dogs
b) uses "night soil" to fertilize rice paddies
c) considers weird parts of odd animals to be "remedies" (bear spleen, or whatever the remedy of the week is).
and
d) considers the United States its primary military and economic rival
So why is this surprising?
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