December 28, 2012

The latest food scandal where Chinese poultry farmers were found to have fed their chickens with antibiotics and hormones to hasten growth, has renewed calls for stricter laws and tighter regulations in China's food safety standards.

Two chicken farms in China's Shangdong province were shut down after they were found to have fed their birds with antibiotics and growth hormones. One of the farms supplied meat to KFC China, which was alerted to the possible contamination as far back as 2010, when samples had tested positive for excessive amounts of antibiotics.

Authorities are now investigating KFC to find out if it took corrective measures at the time. This latest case has, once again, highlighted the need for better regulation in food safety standards.

Zheng Fengtian, Vice Dean of Agricultural Economics & Rural Development at Renmin University, said, "It is currently very vague. There are a few broad categories from production to sale to implementation. As for detailed situations with strict standards, like the keeping of records, if the records are all false, and information has not been accurately entered, how do you want to punish that? Companies which violate the rules are too innovative." He feels the latest case also shows up the drawbacks of industrial farming.

The low cost, high yield model provides employment to peasant farmers... but he says it also encourages them to raise livestock at high density and is harder to supervise in terms of quality.

Zheng said, "Farmers cannot be supervised because there are too many of them. It's easy for them to cheat since they can easily find another buyer for their produce. But if you work with sizable farmer cooperatives, it will hurt these farmers to cheat since no one will work with them after they are found out. So enterprises should work with cooperatives and not with individual farmers in the future to ensure quality."

Zheng believes China needs to move away from industrial farming if the country is serious about improving food safety and ensuring better quality. But it's a change that could take 10 years or more, because of the large number of peasant farms in China.

The KFC incident is the latest in the series of food safety violations exposed by China's state media. Observers say this also reflects a lack of empowered independent bodies to conduct quality checks on food outlets and suppliers.

Besides improving overall industry standard and tightening of regulations, observers say an education in human ethics is another key part to improving overall food safety standards in China. But all these will take time as the country strikes a balance between high-speed economic development and social responsibility.