Yesterday, news of Trump’s assassination attempt went viral. This world-class event should indeed be of concern. However, the issue of edible oil, which affects the health of countless Chinese people, cannot be ‘distracted’ and disappear; it deserves attention until the problem is completely resolved.
According to countless past experiences and lessons, if you don’t care about this yourself and don’t unite to pursue it relentlessly, it’s very likely that it will be glossed over again.
If you want edible oil to be truly safe, you need to do at least three things: legislate, have dedicated edible oil transport tankers, and eliminate that thing.
I won’t elaborate on the third point, but I’ll mainly talk about the first two.
Currently, there are two laws and regulations related to the safety of edible oil transportation. Article 33 of the ‘Food Safety Law’ states that containers, tools, and equipment for storing, transporting, and loading and unloading food should be safe, harmless, and kept clean to prevent food contamination, and should meet special requirements such as temperature and humidity to ensure food safety. Food should not be stored or transported together with toxic or harmful substances. Article 132 of the ‘Food Safety Law’ states that those who fail to store, transport, and load and unload food according to the requirements shall be ordered to rectify by the food safety supervision and management departments of the people’s governments at or above the county level according to their respective responsibilities, and be given a warning; if they refuse to rectify, they shall be ordered to suspend production and business operations and be fined not less than 10,000 yuan and not more than 50,000 yuan; if the circumstances are serious, their licenses shall be revoked.
Another is the ‘Regulations for Bulk Transportation of Edible Vegetable Oil’, which includes a clause requiring that dedicated containers should be used for transporting edible vegetable oil, and non-edible vegetable oil tankers and containers should not be used for transportation.
Regarding the transportation of edible oil, the provisions and penalties of the ‘Food Safety Law’ are obviously too lenient, and it feels like the law is not firmly on the side of the people. The word ‘should’ must be changed to ‘must’, which is strong enough. Furthermore, if transportation is not carried out according to the requirements, the relevant departments will first order rectification according to their respective responsibilities and give a warning. That is to say, if it is discovered that tankers that have been used to transport chemicals are used to transport edible oil, only a warning is given first, and even a fine is not imposed. Only if they refuse to rectify will there be a fine of no more than 50,000 yuan.
The ‘Regulations for Bulk Transportation of Edible Vegetable Oil’ are clearly defined, but these regulations are more of a technical guide and are not mandatory.
If the law has no teeth and the regulations are ignored, those illegal enterprises can of course be lawless. Especially the deeply rooted state-owned enterprises, they are even extremely arrogant and shameless. Look, after the incident, they didn’t even apologize to the public.
The urgent task now is to formulate regulations at the legal level, increase penalties, and prevent unscrupulous enterprises from harming the people. Regardless of whether it can be implemented, at least you have to be clear in the law.
Writing this, I really want to ask those who have the power to formulate and enforce laws, the chaos of mixed edible oil has existed for at least 20 years. Have you not known, or have you pretended not to know? Have you drunk too much Maotai, or played too much Guandan? Are you serving the people, or are you feeding the people poison?
The slogans are loud, but nothing is done.
A bunch of bastards!
The second point is to have dedicated edible oil transport tankers.
A tanker has a very complex internal structure. After it has been used to transport coal-based oil or other chemicals, it cannot be thoroughly cleaned. Even if it can be cleaned, it cannot be used to transport edible oil in a tanker that has been used to transport toxic substances. Because it’s disgusting. Would anyone use a chamber pot as a teapot? Even if it’s cleaned again.
Therefore, in normal countries, edible oil transportation all has dedicated tankers. These days, many media have popularized how the Japanese transport edible oil. The Japanese transportation industry strictly adheres to the principle of ‘dedicated vehicles for dedicated purposes’. Gasoline is only transported in gasoline tankers, edible oil is only transported in edible oil tankers, and chocolate is only transported in chocolate tankers. Production enterprises such as oil companies and grain and oil food companies will have their own transportation companies to ensure the safety and quality of products during transportation.
The situation in another developed country, the United States, is roughly similar to that of Japan. In the United States, the purpose of tankers is clear, and the transportation of food grade and non-food grade must be clearly distinguished, otherwise the penalties are extremely severe.
These developed countries have some common regulations for edible oil transport tankers, such as the tanker needs to be deeply cleaned before each loading (to prevent cross-contamination), the manufacturing material of the tanker must be food grade stainless steel, and it must have temperature control equipment. After each cleaning, the corresponding basis must be retained for inquiry.
Those who have been to developed countries often see edible oil tankers that are as bright as mirrors on the highway. But on the highways of China, you shouldn’t see such a car. On short video platforms, you can easily search for videos of dedicated edible oil tankers in Japan, but you can’t find a single dedicated oil tanker from Chinese companies.
What is developed? It’s not how many high-rise buildings have been built, nor is it the GDP ranking at the forefront of the world, but whether there is a series of institutional guarantees that are truly responsible to the people.
According to reports from the Beijing News, the chaos in edible oil transportation has long been an open secret in the industry, but currently all the companies and brands involved claim that they use dedicated vehicles and that their products are not a problem. But I don’t believe it, and the vast majority of consumers with independent thinking should not believe it either. In fact, it’s very simple to make the public believe, just announce the license plate numbers of their dedicated vehicles. They don’t do this, which is so easy to gain the trust of the people, which can only mean that they are lying.
With our country’s industrial manufacturing level, it is absolutely impossible not to be able to build dedicated edible oil tankers. There were no such tankers before, it’s not a question of whether they can, but a question of whether they want to. Why don’t they want to? It’s nothing more than not being afraid. They have been poisoning the people of the whole country for 20 years, and now they have been discovered, but from the current situation, it is likely that they will still be fined three cups of wine. I hope I’m wrong.
So what should we do?
On the one hand, we must place our hopes on ourselves, by various means, to put pressure on the relevant enterprises, such as everyone resolutely not buying the products of the enterprises and brands involved, until they go bankrupt. Now everyone is a media, through their own channels, constantly speaking out, keeping the heat of the matter always, not being diluted and transferred. Relying on heaven and earth is not as good as relying on yourself.
On the other hand, the relevant departments must really do things, especially the market supervision departments. I won’t talk about the big principles, I’ll just ask one question: Don’t your family members go to restaurants to eat outside?
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