Wasting food is not entertaining

The Beijing Municipal Radio and Television Bureau has suspended Youth with Joy, an online entertainment program, after audiences complained about it promoting the wastage of food.

The problem lay in the manner in which entertainment platform iqiyi.com and a dairy firm proposed to promote celebrities on the program that began on Wednesday.

Fans of the celebrities were asked to scan a QR code hidden inside the dairy firm's milk bottles. That the QR code was valid for only three days prompted many fans to buy the milk bottles in bulk, open them to access the QR code and then dump the milk.

A video that has been widely circulated on social networking sites shows fans throwing away large quantities of milk after scanning the QR code.

The incident highlights the necessity of regulating the entertainment industry.

On April 29, the nation's top legislature passed the Law against Wasting Food, which the show's organizers might have violated.

They have set a bad example as wasting food is also against social mores and public ethics.

Besides, they should have realized that milk could be wasted due to the short validity of the bar codes.

A rule, introduced for entertainment programs in February 2020, forbids the purchase of online votes for stars. The entertainment program seems to have violated this rule.

In a nutshell, the entertainment program, its platform, the fan group organizers and the celebrity management teams are all responsible for encouraging people to waste milk, and the program's producers and the platform should bear responsibility for it.

It should, however, be stressed that blaming wastage of milk does not mean we are not asking people to not idolize celebrities. But people should not idolize celebrities at the cost of wasting food.

People's Daily