Several Reasons of the Chinese Food Problems
Name: Yin Haixia Student ID: S08710
Research paper supervisor:Dr.Sekou Conde
Minzu University of China
2008-2009 Academic Year
Abstract: This paper is mainly about the reasons of China’s food safety which is one of the most serious issues that threatening the development of China, especially after the Melamine Scandal. Fortunately, people have realized its importance and arouse the whole world to fight against it. By using lots of examples, quotations and figures, this paper clearly introduces the reasons from four aspects and reaches its purpose successfully. Besides it uses the method of discussion that describes different ideals, such as the discussion of responsibility and new technology.
Key Words: food culture, food safety, melamine, pollution, food addictive, new technology, food poisoning, lack of supervision
The influence of Chinese Food Culture
China has a long history of more than 5000 years, during which China has developed various aspects of culture, such as courtesy, food, wedding and so on. Among them food culture is considered to be a central aspect of the cultural inheritance, that is because food occupies a very important part of daily life in China. Not only is food considered a source of nutrition, it is a source of enjoyment as well. Some people think that eating the Chinese food is just like enjoying life.
Chinese food culture is a kind of glorious regional culture with broad-vision, deep-level, multi-angle and high-taste. It creates, influents and accumulates the world’s material and spiritual wealth in the aspects of the food product development, the tableware manufacture, food cooking, food nutrition and food esthetic.
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says, "To the ruler, the people are heaven; to the people, food is heaven." Chinese people who have moved away to work or study abroad quickly develop a craving for the taste of Chinese cooking.
Jin Cuihong, who came to Europe five years ago said "I started missing my mother's cooking and because she was so far away, I tried to remember how she prepared food," she reminisced. Jin had to think of ways to recreate the dishes of her childhood in a European kitchen. She also had to get accustomed to the fast pace of life in Europe, where people usually have time to eat just one proper meal in a day. While in China, people pay attention to every meal, they cook carefully and make the food very sumptuous.[1] The experience of her shows the influence of Chinese food to Chinese people. People going abroad should spend long days to adapt other country’s life.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Chinese food is the importance of food itself in Chinese culture. For example, although the issue that Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable and is essentially irrelevant, few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese.
The Current Situation of Chinese Food Security
As famous as before, Chinese food is still popular all over the world. But in recent years, Chinese food expressed more and more problems such as Clenbuterol in pork which resulted in mass poisoning, Excessive pesticide residues in vegetables and formaldehyde in aquatic products and so on. All these occurrences have caused widespread concern. “Which food can we eat?” is the most topic people talking about and food security has become the most worried thing in people’s life.
Form the ancient years, people has known that food is the material basis for human existence and development, without food, people can not even live in the word, let alone reproduce and develop. So the problem of food security is a big issue in every country, it is the major issues related to human health and people’s livelihood. The situation of Chinese food security is not optimistic, this mainly because the increasing food-born illnesses and vicious food contaminated incidents, the hazard brought by the new technology of food processing and the food trade disputes arising from the quality of the worldwide food safety and hygiene. [2] These problems have become the important element that influents the country’s economic development, international tradition and reputation. If these problems can not be attached importance, the situation may get even worse.
In recent years, China's food industry has been in the state of high-speed development. The gross domestic product sales revenue has ranked first for many years in China's manufacturing industry. Food industry has become an important industry for national economic development. At the same time, in the rapid development of industrialization and globalization of today, as the modernization of food production and the standard of living, people's food consumption has a gradually transition to socialization, mainly from the family cooking to the professional production, and the risk of food safety problems increases. According to a survey, about 82 percent of Chinese people are anxious of food safety and more than 90 percent of the interviewees have suffered the food problems.[3] So food safety has increasingly become a strong concern.
“The first thing I did when I went to Fuzhou was to find a restaurant. It is a really anxious thing when you face the food on the table. Because when we eating the rice, we worry about the poison and when we eating the vegetable we worry about the pesticide residues.” said Xi Jinping, who was the youngest nomarch of China and was the nomarch of Fujian that time.
Various food problems have let the Chinese people suffering for a long time. According to information provided by the Ministry of Health, in the year of 2003, the Ministry of Health received the 379 reports of major food poisoning with 12,876 people were poisoned and 323 people were killed. Compared to 2002, the number of major food poisoning ,the number of poisoned people and the number of deaths increased by 196.1%, 80.7%, 134.1% respectively [4]. That is a horrible thing.
The food problems of China not only make the Chinese people living in fear, but also let the other countries worry about the future of trading with China, considering whether to import the material or products. In order o protect the people’s health, some country have limited the import of Chinese food. This phenomenon is not a good news to China, because we need transaction with other country to develop our own economy. Every failure negotiations and transactions can result in irreversible loss.
Because of the event of frozen shrimp in Austria, on January 28th, 2002, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization announced in the Marrakech Parliament Hall, Morocco that the animal origin products that used for human consumption or animal feed are banned to be exported except for the enteric layer and fisheries products that are transported into the territory of the community after sea fished, frozen and finally packaged. This prohibition implied that China would lose 623 000 000dollars about the fisheries exports. There were more than 95 enterprises of China damaged with 3-5 million dollars average. At the same time, 4960 000 Chinese labor involved. Later, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration responded on this matter. According to statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture Information Center, as a result of the total ban, the EU export of animal products in China dropped 33.5%, as well as Asian and African exports dropped substantially. [5] This was a huge hit to China's aquaculture industry and aquaculture. It also impacted China’s economy seriously. It is not worthy to sacrifice the whole country’s development only because of one problem.
In addition, pet food, toothpaste, toys, milk powder, eggs and fish... all products from China that strike fear among consumers and regulators in the US, where the “Made in China “ label conjures skull and crossbones images. It is obvious that these words are an irony on China.
All the figures and the facts above show that the Chinese food which was famous for its color, aroma and taste and was welcomed by the world will become an epidemic, if the situation is not changed. So it is high time that the government and the Chinese people consider the food security seriously and implement feasible measures to improve this situation.
“Food safety has become a political agenda,” said Ezzeddine Boutrif, chief of food quality in the Food and Agriculture Organization's food and nutrition division. “No government will accept that it cannot protect its own people because of a food safety problem.” [6] The issue of food safety is not only one country’s task, it is the world’s agenda that all the countries should [...]
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