Mr. Frape says he also questions how rigorously inspectors check Chinese products that are packaged elsewhere and aren’t necessarily labelled as Chinese. Chinese honey, for instance, is often sold in North America as products of Indonesia, Malaysia or Taiwan. Plus, food items can be labelled Product of Canada or Made in Canada but include imported ingredients.
Janet Auty-Carlisle of Mansfield, Ont., says her family grows its own or buys locally grown produce, and scrutinizes food labels to steer clear of Chinese products. Although Chinese authorities have come down hard on producers who use toxic additives – and some even view the recent rash of food scandals as a positive sign the government is tackling the problem – Ms. Auty-Carlisle says she prefers to control what she consumes herself.
“As much as I understand there are what they say are crackdowns, I hold my own judgment on that, and we’ll see. We’ll see what happens,” she says.
Jim Morehouse, senior partner at the management consulting firm A.T. Kearney in Chicago, says Canadian and U.S. consumers have good reason to be wary of Chinese imports.
“The problem is that things grown in China are often grown in polluted soil, so you get all sorts of things in the product that you didn’t want. It’s not just pesticides, it’s heavy metals and other kinds of things,” says Mr. Morehouse, who has done extensive research on China’s food safety problems. He notes that food handling procedures in China may also be dubious.
Mr. Morehouse led a study, presented in 2007 at the industry CIES World Food Business Summit in Shanghai, that concluded China needs a $100-billion (U.S.) investment to fix its “broken” food safety process, including improving safety standards, warehousing, transportation and training. While Chinese authorities have since introduced better food-safety legislation, that hasn’t solved the issue of improving the country’s basic infrastructure, he says.
Traditionally, he adds, Chinese authorities tend to paper overscandals, issuing mass arrests and swift executions to give the impression of aggressive action. In 2007, for instance, the former head of the country’s food and drug administration was executed after he was found guilty of accepting bribes from companies to sidestep safety checks. And in the wake of the 2008 tainted-milk scandal, when at least six children died and more than 300,000 were sickened, China executed two men for their role in selling the melamine-laced baby formula. Yet Mr. Morehouse says the underlying problems still persist.
“They don’t play by the same rules,” he says. “The issue is that China is a much more entrepreneurial culture than we live in and ethically, getting somebody sick is not particularly a big deal in China, where in the U.S. or Canada, getting somebody sick is a really big deal.”
“You want to cut to the bottom line?” Mr. Morehouse adds. “Buy your produce from somebody that you know and trust and has a track record.”
Correction: Leanne Palmerston was looking to buy evaporated milk, not condensed milk. Incorrect information appeared on May 20.
