For those of you who (like me) have your Google Alerts set to Wuhan, you probably noticed the articles last week (and here) on the most recent food scandal in China, pesticide-poisoned cowpeas from Hainan (a tropical island paradise in southern China) that were discovered in Hubei province by the local agricultural department. What makes this scandal different is that instead of trying to cover up the mistake while consumers continued to eat the contaminated food (which was what happened with the melamine-poisoned milk two years ago), the authorities in Wuhan alerted the public, which in turn upset the local government in Hainan.
From China Daily:
The local agricultural department in southernmost Hainan province has blamed its counterpart in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei province, for breaking an unspoken rule by letting the public know about toxic cowpeas.
Hainan’s vegetable sales have suffered a setback after a highly toxic pesticide was detected in cowpeas grown in the area and sold across the country.
The Wuhan agriculture bureau released the information on Feb 21, saying that 3.5 tons of toxic cowpeas, from several counties in Sanya of Hainan, had been seized and destroyed.
Later, toxic cowpeas from Hainan were also found in markets in Guangdong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces.
However, faced with such a big food safety scandal, Sanya agricultural authorities said they could not understand why Wuhan released the information, because such issues usually remain internal, China National Radio reported on Monday.
“It (the release of the information) did not save face for Sanya, nor save face for the Ministry of Agriculture,” Zhou Qingchong, deputy director of the law enforcement team of the Sanya agricultural bureau, was quoted as saying.
According to unspoken rules, Wuhan should have just informed Sanya, and the latter would have sent out investigation teams to find the source, Zhou said.
“Wuhan is really not enough of a friend,” he was quoted as saying.
For the sake of all of us who are eating food in China, I hope that more local governments follow Wuhan’s example in the future, face or no face for local governments of other provinces.