For many innocent Chinese, the world has suddenly become very unsafe.

After a recent spate of staggering exposures, such as hot-pot condiments mixed with paraffin wax, pickles laced with poisonous pesticide, milk powder containing scant protein and wine diluted with industrial alcohol, shopping for safe food is now a difficult mission to complete, and demands knowledge and scrutiny.

Zhao Yong, a paediatrician with the People's Hospital in Fuyang, the most important agricultural city of East China's Anhui Province, cannot remember exactly how many "big-head babies" he has treated over the past year.

"My impression is there are many of them, at least 70," he said.

The big-headed babies are the victims of inferior milk powders, which contain at most one-tenth of the protein required by State standards. As a result, the babies fed with the inferior products suffer from malnutrition, and developed disproportionately large heads. Many of the babies will not live for more than one year, while those who survive longer will likely be mentally disabled.

But Zhao noticed an obvious reduction in the number of such babies among his patients since April, when the inferior milk powders were exposed by media and local government.

Things could have been controlled if the government had been more vigilant and fought the profiteers with greater effort, Zhao said.

But the commercial and industrial authority of Fuyang has its own complaints. "Limited staff and funding make it impossible for us to examinate all the products sold on the market all the time," said an official with the authority, who declined to be named.

Wang Yang, an official with the commercial and industrial authority of Chongqing in Southwest China, admitted the same difficulty in his daily work. Wang and his colleagues had a hard time around the start of this year after the exposure of hot-pot condiments mixed with paraffin wax, because hot-pot represents an important part of Chongqing's image world wide.

"The municipal government has decided to completely erase the fake and poisonous hot-pot condiment at all cost," he recalled.

Therefore, for five weeks in a row, Wang and his colleagues had to take on night shifts, waiting by the hotline set up especially to gather information about the whereabouts of those black-hearted profiteers and ready to rush to any suspected site as soon as possible.

At the same time, they co-operated closely with the local hot-pot industry association to regulate the quality of condiments sold in the market. "Whoever is found selling the bad condiment will be pushed out of business," Wang said.

But when concentrating on the hot-pot condiment, Wang admitted his team actually suspended other responsibilities, such as a previously-scheduled comprehensive overhaul of food quality sold in the city in general.

When you have to make a choice between a regular inspection and some highlighted complaints, the latter always takes priority, said Wang, believing this choice better serves the needs of the people.

However, even after such a great effort, Wang can only say none of the paraffin wax hot-pot condiment is being publicly sold in the city. He refused to comment on whether or not there are still shameless profiteers sticking to the business because of the huge profit involved.

The same thing is happening in Fuyang. Although the city's commercial and industrial authority has cracked down on 189 major distributors of inferior milk powder since last December, the shoddy product is still available on supermarket shelves.

The authorities have recently adopted a new measure, which demands all distributors present certificates guaranteeing quality before they start selling milk powder.

But will this help? Even if it does, it can only be effective for a short time. Observers draw attention to the huge number and extraordinary mobility of the distributors who have already used direct sales to get their inferior milk powder into the market.

Challenging job

But work has to be done, even if it is hard.

Although most local officials interviewed by China Daily refused to disclose their identities, they did voice a desire to have a better co-ordinated mechanism in place, not only among various governmental departments but also among different regions, to facilitate the campaign.

Food safety is a complicated issue in China involving seven to eight governmental departments and organizations - health, quality and quarantine, commercial and industrial administration, environmental protection, agriculture and industrial associations. Each is entitled to have a say in the issue. Inevitably, there are inter-departmental wrangles as well as managerial vacuums.

In the case of Fuyang, the anonymous official with the commercial and industrial authority complained that local health authorities should have known about the problematic milk powder much earlier when doubting parents submitted samples of the product for analysis. But they had not adopted any measures or informed the other departments, he said.

Moreover, since much of the milk powder is produced outside the city, local commercial and industrial authorities in Fuyang feel they can have little impact on erasing the problem.

A follow-up investigation of the central government has confirmed the information, saying 70 to 80 per cent of the inferior milk powder was manufactured in Northeast China, North China's Inner Mongolia and East China's Zhejiang Province.

A source with the Development and Research Centre under the State Council said there is much concern among experts that the country lacks an authoritative force at the top level to integrate all related strengths to impose effective supervision on the quality of food, especially in the countryside.

"The Fuyang case is not an isolated one. Fake, inferior and even dangerous foods are already rampant in the countryside," said the anonymous researcher, citing a recent case in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, in which 11 people died after drinking fake white spirit sold at rural markets. It turned out to be slightly-diluted industrial alcohol.

Cheng Muda, a Beijing-based sociologist, believes it is time to enhance farmers' awareness of self-protection against fake, inferior and even dangerous products.

"The government should establish a system to update those farmers in remote regions with related laws and governmental polices," he said. "Otherwise, they can but remain easy victims of profiteers, which, in turn, allows room for the survival of those profiteers under the strong fire of the government."

In view of the country's vast area and huge population, Cheng believes this is a more economical and more practical way to fight profiteers than having the government wage "guerrilla warfare" against them.

Of course, this effort is not easy, especially when many rural families are poorly educated and more gullible.

At the very least there should be people out there informing rural residents about dangerous products and access to a hotline they can use to contact the government for help, Cheng said.

(China Daily 05/21/2004 page5)