Officials in China at Odds Over Food Scandal
Officials in China at Odds Over Food Scandal
By EDWARD WONG
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/asia/03hainan.html
SANYA, China — A widening national toxic food scandal that has its
roots in this tropical island resort area in the South China Sea has
set off a rare case of public sniping between officials.
The scandal, which has been reported by official news organizations in
the last few days, is centered on the cowpea — an ancient species of
legume that includes the black-eyed pea.
Since late February, batches of cowpeas from the lush Sanya area of
the island of Hainan have tested positive for a highly toxic
pesticide, isocarbophos, that is banned from use on fruits and
vegetables, according to a report on Tuesday in China Daily, the
official English-language newspaper. Tainted cowpeas from here have
been found in the provinces of Hubei, Guangdong, Anhui and Jiangsu.
The pesticide was banned in Hainan in 2004 but can still be found in
remote parts of the island, China Daily reported. Some farmers still
use it because it is much cheaper than legal pesticides. Though Hainan
is well known among Chinese for its sweeping beaches and five-star
resorts, it also has a mountainous interior with rich farmland, much
of it on terraced hillsides.
The outrage over the Hainan cowpeas, the latest in a series of Chinese
food safety scandals in recent years, erupted on Feb. 21, when the
agriculture bureau of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, announced that it
had destroyed 3.5 tons of toxic cowpeas from Hainan. An urgent
nationwide warning was issued by the central government’s Ministry of
Agriculture, and within days, cowpeas tainted with the banned
pesticide were discovered in the three other provinces.
Officials here in Sanya have criticized the Wuhan officials for
breaking an “unspoken rule” that officials in different cities and
provinces report problems to one another rather than telling the
public, China Daily reported.
The release of the information by Wuhan officials “did not save face
for Sanya, nor did it save face for the Ministry of Agriculture,” Zhou
Qingchong, an official in the Sanya agriculture bureau, told China
National Radio, an official news organization, according to the China
Daily report.
Mr. Zhou said Wuhan officials could have told Sanya officials about
the cowpeas privately, and Sanya would have sent out investigators.
“Wuhan is really not enough of a friend,” he said.
Many provinces in China banned sales of Hainan cowpeas after the first
tainted batches were discovered. In the area of Dongguan, in Guangdong
Province, the authorities destroyed 7.5 tons of cowpeas on Sunday. The
price of the crop has plummeted.
Because of its tropical climate, Hainan grows and exports vegetables
that cannot be grown elsewhere in China during the winter. But
officials in Sanya, the island’s main beach resort area, recently
decided to adopt policies to push tourism ahead of agriculture, said
Du Liyin, director of the Sanya Tourism Development Commission, in an
interview on Tuesday.
Yet, Ms. Du said, “we don’t plan to be 100 percent reliant on the
tourism industry.”
In 2008, a widespread food scare gripped China when news organizations
reported that dairy products from nearly two dozen manufacturers were
tainted with melamine, a toxic industrial chemical. At least six
children died and 300,000 people fell ill from the products, the
government said. Senior Chinese officials eventually ordered news
organizations to stop reporting on the scandal, fearing that the news
highlighted endemic corruption within various levels of the
government. Some parents are still trying to sue for compensation.