Recently, Shuanghui was exposed by the media for exceeding the standard of veterinary antibiotics by 37.5 times.
I smiled when I saw the news: only 37.5 times? Lower than I thought.
Before, I saw data released by food and drug administrations in some places showing that antibiotic residues in eggs were so high it was scary; as for freshwater fish, don’t even mention it. Not only antibiotics, but to keep the fish alive, a long list of chemical names are added.
There’s no medicine where there should be medicine, and there’s medicine everywhere there shouldn’t be medicine – this is a comment I saw from a netizen recently.
This is easy to understand: some medicines are like taking nothing, they have no effect at all; while some foods that shouldn’t have medicine are full of it.
This actually reflects two problems in the current regulation of food and drugs: on one hand, the efficacy of many medicines has declined, and on the other hand, the abuse of antibiotics in farming is severe.
Why has the regulation of food and drugs always been a difficult problem? This involves a fundamental flaw in the governance logic.
When it comes to food safety, it’s actually difficult to regulate, and that’s a fact. Because the production of food safety often comes from complex and long chains, and strict regulation at every intermediate step is indeed not easy.
But this is not an excuse, because the food safety problems we see every day are often blatant and not very hidden.
For example, the problem of adding malachite green to the water of freshwater fish, and the problem of adding Rongbai blocks to foods like dried bean curd…
The Beijing News reported in 2016:
“Malachite green is cheap and has no substitute in eliminating fish diseases.” Zhou Zhuocheng, chairman of the China Fisheries Association. He knows very well why merchants still use malachite green, which can cause cancer and birth defects.
“There has been a trend of rampant use in the past two years.” On November 25, Zhou Zhuocheng told a reporter from the Beijing News that malachite green has been banned in China’s aquaculture industry for 16 years, but its “miraculous effect” in preventing fish diseases makes aquatic product merchants take risks and secretly abuse it.
Actually, I really want to “vindicate” Shuanghui – not because I think it has no problems, but because large enterprises are relatively well-disciplined.
Some people might think that large enterprises usually have connections and are arrogant, and regulators turn a blind eye, but it should be noted: private enterprises have competitors and many different forces watching them. Once a scandal is exposed, the impact is huge, so their self-discipline and regulatory level are above a certain average.
The antibiotic detected in Shuanghui this time is a basic veterinary antibiotic. Relatively speaking, its negative impact is objectively much smaller than the prohibited substances I listed earlier.
What about the ones I listed? Long-term consumption can lead to cancer or damage to the digestive and metabolic organs, causing direct harm to the body.
From this, we can see that the most serious and widespread impact of our food safety problems is not on large enterprises, but on the primary processed foods sold in small vegetable shops and small supermarkets in all cities across the country, such as vermicelli, bean products, noodles, etc., as well as some cooked foods such as braised dishes, steamed buns, and buns…
There are also issues like malachite green, which come from a large number of scattered farmers and merchants.
The杨梅 (bayberry) soaked in medicine some time ago came from the intermediate dealer link.
Previously, a media report exposed a small noodle shop in Shanghai that had been adding borax for a long time, just to make the noodles look better and fresher.
It can be seen that the most difficult aspect of food safety regulation is “dispersion” and “multiple links.” Harmful food is ubiquitous and quietly infiltrates our lives, but its source is usually quite complex.
I often observe those small noodle shops, small vegetable shops, and small supermarkets. Their suppliers of primary processed foods and cooked foods are often “three-no” products (no production license, no product quality certificate, no factory name and address) or lack qualifications, but these foods constitute the main source of our daily food and ingredient purchases. Their production points are mainly concentrated in urban-rural fringe areas and townships, and some remote small places – the “black workshops” we sometimes see exposed and extremely disgusting are often in these places.
Behind these foods, there is usually a large and hidden supply chain, often organized by city or by district within a city.
While middle-class white-collar workers can choose Sam’s Club or Hema, for most people, the above food sources are the absolute mainstream.
Speaking of adding borax to noodles, I once bought some dried noodles that I forgot to eat. After more than a month at room temperature, I found that it had not spoiled or grown mold.
There are many things that are unthinkable. I have also learned about some vegetable planting practices, where some medicines are directly added to the irrigation water in the ditches.
That’s why people say – I dare not eat what I raise, and I dare not eat what I grow.
“Mutual harm” is just a superficial phenomenon, and it cannot rely solely on people’s moral self-discipline. In the face of huge profits, the self-consolation of “a little bit won’t hurt” is very common among merchants.
In summary, from planting and breeding, to primary and secondary food processing, to circulation and transit links, there are many regulatory blind spots throughout the entire chain and in all aspects.
This tests two aspects of governance capacity: the execution of “legalized regulation” and the ability to “do fine work.”
“Legalized regulation” should not be limited to inspections by leaders, or even secretly notifying merchants before inspections, but rather using the law for regulation.
If the motivation for regulation is only to “cope with leaders” or “ensure no incidents,” then it will only lead to sporadic enforcement.
We can also learn from the experiences of other countries. For example, in European food regulation, police directly participate in law enforcement. The black workshops I mentioned earlier are directly dismantled by police forces in Europe. Why is this? Because food safety is essentially a legal issue, not a “regulatory” issue. Direct law enforcement by the police or joint law enforcement with food regulatory departments provides the strongest deterrent.
Fundamentally, the laxity in food safety regulation is sometimes based on a “violation” logic rather than a “crime” logic. For example, adding some harmful substances to food is essentially a slow poison, not an “illegal additive,” but a direct harm to public health, which should be severely punished as a criminal offense.
This shift in thinking is similar to the implementation of traffic laws – it’s not about traffic rules, but about laws; not about violations, but about crimes.
Only when violations become crimes, and the cost of committing a crime is high, will unscrupulous merchants be afraid. This is a common experience in all countries with good food safety regulation.
Media supervision is also very important. For example, the media’s report on the excessive antibiotics in meat this time is not focused on a specific enterprise, but on letting everyone see: such problems exist.
As long as people are constantly reminded that problems exist, there is always a possibility of gradual improvement.
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