Food safety scandal rocks China as report claims cooking oil carried in same trucks as fuel | CNN Business
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Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.

Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.

The scandal, which implicates China’s largest grain storage and transport company Sinograin, and private conglomerate Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, has raised concerns of food contamination in a country rocked in recent decades by a string of food and drug safety scares – and evoked harsh criticism from Chinese state media.

It was an “open secret” in the transport industry that the tankers were doing double duty, according to a report in the state-linked outlet Beijing News last week, which alleged that trucks carrying certain fuel or chemical liquids were also used to transport edible liquids such as cooking oil, syrup and soybean oil, without proper cleaning procedures.

  • carl_marks[use name]English
    512·
    5 months ago

    On China’s heavily moderated social media platforms, many members of the public called for product recalls and greater industry oversight.

    Some also appeared to link the situation to broader issues in the country, where an economic downturn is driving social frustration and there are deep-seated concerns about the limits of accountability for powerful and government-linked entities.

    “Even the cooking oil essential to people’s daily lives has now become problematic… Ordinary people cannot be properly safeguarded… Now I just want to scoff at (phrases like) ‘rule of law’ and ‘serving the people’ whenever I see them,” read one comment on China’s X-like social media platform Weibo, that garnered thousands of likes.

    I thought China was heavily censoring criticism and you couldn’t voice your opinions publicly? lol

    Basically a food scandal has been uncovered by their media and the government takes action in the public’s interest. Something you’d expect a functioning government to do. And this article makes you think it’s a bad thing.

    Summed up:

    Despite rising living standards in recent decades, food safety has been an ongoing issue in China, where dozens of high-profile scandals have been reported by local media since the early 2000s, sparking tighter government regulation.

    Based.

    The entire article has so much coping and seething and was a really fun read. Thank you for sharing.

    • Woht24@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      5 months ago

      I think you can’t really voice your opinion. But that’s due to the consequences, you can’t post illegal shit to your Facebook too, i.e. you’ll be reported very quickly and it’ll be taken down but you can still do it if you want to run the gauntlet.