Submitted by: Jessica Harris

I grew up around agriculture so I hold it very close to my heart. I pride myself on living in the highest agriculture producing state in the US. As I’ve been learning more about China, I could not help but ask myself “What is agriculture in China like?” I mean, they have 1.3 billion people to feed! That’s 23% of the world’s population!!!! But then I got to thinking, what about food safety in China. After our last Chindia meeting, I couldn’t help but be freaked out a little bit after Dr. Carr repeatedly reminded us to eat LOTS of fruit while we are there so we avoid getting “backed up”. And, though I know this trip is based around business aspects of China, China has the largest agriculture economy in the world making up 15.2% of their GDP, as well as the most valued, so I thought it would be good to do a quick rundown of it. Plus, I imagine that we will all be eating while we are there and are a bit curious as to how their standards compare to ours.

The main crops grown in China are rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, and apples. Their main livestock production includes pork, beef, dairy, and eggs. All agriculture production, as well as packaging, containers, chemical, additives, drug production, and business regulation is overseen by the Chinese government. In 2003, the Chinese government attempted to consolidate all food regulation under the State Food and Drug Administration of China, but they are still having issues with it. Regardless, the government is under both public and international pressure to solve food safely problems. Why? Because of incidents such as counterfeit baby formula killing thirteen babies, lead contaminated longkou noodles, soy sauce made from human hair (and I freak out when I find one of my own hairs in food), alcohol drinks made from industrial alcohol, an entire elementary school coming down with food poisoning after lunch, and counterfeit drugs, just to name a few.

So what has been done in order to make sure incidents like this are eliminated, or at least reduced? “In October 2007, China approved new legislation aimed at improving and monitoring national standards in food production. New laws will standardize food production and clamp down on illegal activity in the industry.” (Gale, Fred. “China at a Glance: A Statistical Overview of China’s Food and Agriculture.” April 2002.) Alright…that sounds great in theory, but incidents continue to occur. Here in the US we have the FDA and the USDA that standardize and inspect out food and even though we also have our own problems (who can forget the ecoli spinach, or the recent peanut butter situation), we are able to trace the problem directly back to the source and perform a recall on the products.

My question for all of you, why isn’t a system similar to this implemented in China?