The Hidden Price of Food from China

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/europe-worries-about-health-hazards-of-cheap-food-from-china-a-861406.html



In recent years, China has become a major food supplier to Europe. But the low-cost goods are grown in an environment rife with pesticides and antibiotics, disproportionately cited for contamination and subject to an inspection regime full of holes. A recent norovirus outbreak in Germany has only heightened worries.

The Hidden Price of Food from China
By SPIEGEL Staff
10/17/2012

Qufu, the city in China's southwestern Shandong Province where Confucius was born, isn't exactly an attractive place. But its fields are as good as gold. A few weeks ago, a shipment of strawberries left those fields bound for Germany.

The air above the cities of the Chinese heartland is blackened with smog, as trucks barrel along freshly paved roads carrying loads of coal from the mines or iron girders from the region's smelters. Fields stretch to the horizon, producing food to feed the world's most populous country.

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Zhou notes that farmers used to eat the same foods they sold. But now that they are aware of the harmful effects of pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics, they still produce a portion of their farm products for the market and a portion for their own families. The only difference is that the food for their families is produced using traditional methods. In fact, many wealthy Chinese have bought their own farms so as not to be dependent on what's available in supermarkets. There are also reports of special plots of land used to produce food exclusively for senior government officials.


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But there are still many problems, as evidenced by an early warning system in Brussels designed to detect contaminated food and animal feed products for all EU countries, which disproportionately flags products originating in China. By last Friday, 262 reports on Chinese products had been received in Brussels for 2012 alone. They included noodles infested with maggots, shrimp contaminated with antibiotics, foul-smelling peanuts and candied fruit with an excessively high sulfur content (see graphic).