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▼ THE CHINA REPORT ▼

REPORT ON THE INQUIRY INTO THE PRODUCTION AND MARKETING OF FOODSTUFFS
Report No. 4 in the 37th Parliament 2006 (release date, March 30, 2006)
Prepared by the
(AUSTRALIAN) ECONOMICS AND INDUSTRY STANDING COMMITTEE

The information included on this webpage was extracted from the final report of the (Austrailian) Economics and Industry Standing Committee on the Inquiry into Production and Marketing of Foodstuffs (date of release, March 30, 2006). The 353-page report (pdf file), in part, addresses the following question:

How safe are food imports when they reach Australia?

Excerpt from the report's "Executive Summary:" The Committee considers there is cause for concern over the current status of Thailand’s environment, widespread pollution of waterways and inadequate treatment and disposal of solid waste being the most pressing issues. Of further concern, high levels of organochlorine pesticides in Thai women suggests excessive environmental and/or dietary exposure. The Committee also believes the current status of China’s environment warrants concern. The weight of evidence suggests that there are continued high levels of organochlorine pesticides in some regions, and perhaps more disturbingly, continued input of some of these pesticides.

Summary findings on the safety of foodstuffs imported from China:

Finding 53
The weight of evidence suggests there is a high level of environmental contamination by organochlorine pesticides and other potentially toxic chemicals in some regions of China.

Finding 54
A number of recent studies of China’s environment point to recent input of DDT, although its use in agriculture was officially banned in 1983. Recent DDT contamination is thought to be due mainly to continued use of dicofol, a pesticide that is made from DDT and which may contain high levels of DDT contamination. Analysis of dicofol preparations in China in 2003 found an average 244 grams per kilogram (24.4 percent) of DDT and its metabolites.

Finding 55
Levels of DDT in breast milk of Chinese women is many times higher than the levels detected in Australian women. Further, the ratio of DDE (a DDT metabolite) to DDT, is much lower than in Australian women, suggesting that Chinese women have been exposed more recently to DDT than Australian women.

In 2003, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)363 was invited by the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) to participate in a task force charged with examining key agricultural and rural development policy issues faced by China in the early 21st century. Based on its observations over the period of its involvement in the task force, ACIAR made the following general comments on the issues China
currently faces with regard to ensuring food safety:

The formal education level of most farmers is low. Standards and regulations covering crop input manufacture, application rates and waste management are not rigorously enforced;
China is now the world leader in both inorganic fertiliser and pesticide consumption. In the past 30 years, while world nitrogen fertiliser application increased by 7 times, China’s nitrogen use in crop production increased 45 times. On average, nitrogen use per hectare is about 3 times the world average;
Various pesticide compounds have been produced and applied to crops. Many whose use has been curtailed or banned in other countries are still widely used in China. Among them are pesticides that are known to leave toxic residues in the environment;
There is growing concern about the increasing use of fertilisers and pesticides that cause pollution of rivers, lakes and sea from run-off and seepage, and thereby become sources of ecological problems. China’s accession to WTO has raised food-safety concerns due to residual effects of high rates of fertiliser and pesticide application;
Several studies have shown that high rates of fertiliser and pesticide application are partially due to ineffective extension services to advise farmers on input rates and nutrient balance;
Use of proven integrated pest management (IPM) techniques is still not widespread.
Pesticide application rates in China are still rising while they are falling everywhere in Southeast Asia;
Average annual growth rates [of the livestock sector] have been 2-5% faster than the crop sector and the livestock sector’s share of total agricultural GDP has doubled. The environmental costs have been high, with large volumes of solid wastes from pig and poultry units and 40% or more of wastes being discharged without treatment into watercourses; and
There is no national strategy to deal with the waste-disposal system. Some provinces have responded to the problem, but have been hindered by the lack of adequate regulatory and economic mechanisms to ensure compliance.

Despite strengthening of regulations and monitoring of food safety, reports of unsafe or contaminated food [in China] still appear to be relatively common. Some examples are provided below:

In November 2001, 40 farmers in China’s Jiangsu Province suffered food poisoning and the following day 484 people were reported to have eaten contaminated pork in Guandong Province. An official from the Ministry of Health indicated that unsafe use of pesticides and growth-enhancing hormones were the major causes of such food poisoning outbreaks.
According to Ministry statistics, the number of food producing entities grew from 1.2 to 5 million between 1995 to 2000 and many small scale food producers were using unhygienic facilities to meet increasing demands;
In January 2002, shortly after joining the WTO, the EU suspended imports of all products of animal origin from China after finding residues of the antibiotic chloramphenicol in 24 batches of frozen shrimp. The ban was imposed because the EU considered China’s system to control residues of veterinary chemicals in farmed animals to be inadequate at the time.
In April 2004, thirteen infants were reported to have died of nutritional deficiencies and more than 170 suffered severe malnutrition in east China’s Anhui Province after consuming substandard milk powder. Although national standards dictate the contents of infant milk powders, investigations revealed that producers had replaced essential nutritional elements with starch and sugar.
In January 2005, figures released at a national conference on food and drug supervision and management indicated that 390,000 cases of production and/or sale of fake or substandard food were investigated in 2003, of which 128,000 were prosecuted;
In May 2005, health officials raised concerns about a dramatic increase in the rate of foodborne parasitic infections in the last ten years. Incidences of liver fluke infections were reported to have increased by 75 percent according to a Ministry of Health survey of 31 provinces from 2001 to 2004. The increasing incidence of parasitic infestation was attributed to increased consumption of raw seafood;
A July 2005 media report estimated that more than 70 percent of China’s 106,000 registered food makers are small family businesses hiring less than 10 people, and at least 60 percent of these cannot meet the most basic sanitary standards;
In July 2005, the discovery of malachite green in fish sold in Henan province prompted calls for nationwide inspections for the product, which was banned from use in 2002. Beijing’s Food Safety Office indicated that routine testing did not include malachite green. A Shanghai Fishery Office Official claimed that some fish farmers continue to use malachite green to treat parasitic and fungal infections because it is cheap. Six weeks later, 10 of 25 samples of freshwater fish imported to Hong Kong from the mainland also tested positive to malachite green.
In July 2005, the Assistant Minister of Commerce claimed that China still faces a serious situation in the matter of food safety, with the failure rate of food hygiene as high as 8 percent and the rate of excessive pesticide residues in vegetables still around 7 percent;
In October 2005, regulators confirmed that some polyvinyl chloride food wrappers used in China contain DEHA, a substance that may cause cancer. Although the national standard on PVC food wraps, released in 1988, did not prohibit the use of DEHA, the compound was not listed on a 2003 national standard, which lists safe substances that can be used in wrapping materials.

The report also released some damning findings regarding the United States:

(a) Physical contaminants
Physical contaminants include such things as plastic, glass, faecal pellets, insects and rodents, some of which may cause physical harm and others which do not pose a health risk, but are nonetheless considered unacceptable. Food Standards Australia New Zealand has a zero tolerance policy toward most physical hazards in food, either on the basis of safety (eg glass, wire) or suitability (insect fragments). For a number of primary products, some physical contamination is tolerated, provided that further processing, through sieving or the use of flotation tanks for example, will remove offending material.

The United States has a different approach to some physical contaminants in food, having devised a Food Defect Action Levels list, which sets standards for ‘natural or unavoidable’ defects in food that present no health hazard. These defects include insect fragments and larvae, rodent hairs and mammalian excreta. The FDA set these action levels because it considered that “it is economically impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of nonhazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.” The following provides a representative example of the limits at which the FDA will regard the food product “adulterated” and take action:

US FDA/CFSAN Defect Action Level Handbook

Product: Ground thyme
Insect filth: Average of 925 or more insect fragments per 10 grams
Rodent filth: Average of 2 or more rodent hairs per 10 grams

This caveat aside, it is of some concern to the Committee that one of our major food import partners has adopted a practice of tolerating certain levels of insect and rodent particles in foods..

Finding 29
Between 1997 and 2000, the United States manufactured and exported almost 30 million tons of banned or severely restricted pesticides, more than half of which was sent to developing countries.

Continued production and use of banned pesticides
POP production and world trade still exists. In 2001, around 40 countries were still producing POP pesticides. Although DDT was banned for agricultural use in China in 1983, it continues to be produced for export (ostensibly for malaria control) and for domestic use in production of another pesticide, dicofol. Dicofol is used extensively in some regions of China to control mites that damage cotton, fruit trees and vegetables. Its chemical structure is similar to DDT, but its health and environmental effects are less well characterised. Environmental concerns have prompted some countries to ban dicofol, and other countries are following suit by imposing severe restrictions on its use. Between 1988 and 2002, China produced 97,000 tons of DDT, of which 54,000 tons was used to manufacture 40,000 tons of dicofol, most of which was used domestically. It is not only China and other developing countries that export banned pesticides. Between 1997 and 2000, the United States manufactured and exported almost 30 million tons of banned or severely restricted pesticides, more than half of which was sent to developing countries.

Finding 46
Results from the 2003 US Food and Drug Administration pesticide monitoring program indicate that 2.4% of all domestically produced foods surveyed contained pesticide residues in excess of regulatory limits. The highest rates of residue violations were detected in certain types of fruits and vegetables and in tea, coffee and wines.

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