SubscribeChinese Factory Sold 100,000 “Dirty Chopsticks”
From those lovers of Communist dictatorships at Reuters:
A worker walks past piles of disposable chopsticks at a factory in Sanjiang, southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, May 27, 2007. A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest is a string of food and product safety scares.
Chopsticks picked up in new China scare
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory sold up to 100,000 pairs of disposable chopsticks a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of food and product safety scares.
Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys.
Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said in a story headlined “Dirty Chopsticks.”
The owner, identified only by his surname Wu, said he had sold the chopsticks for 0.04 yuan a pair and made an average of about 1,000 yuan ($130) a day.
Wu, who had no license to sell the goods, said he had sold 100,000 pairs a day when business was good.
China lacks the manpower to enforce food and drug safety regulations at home or for export. Imports are generally carefully scrutinized.
Shao Mingli, the country’s food and drug watchdog chief, conceded that in recent years the safety situation had “indeed been relatively grim.”
But in a posting on the central government’s Web site (www.gov.cn), Shao vowed it would take “about five years of hard work” to realize an “obvious turnaround” in management order and food and drug safety across the country.
“The number of cases of fake food and drug products and criminal activities will be effectively curbed,” Shao said.
A lack of business ethics and a spiritual vacuum after China embraced economic reforms in the late 1970s have been blamed for unscrupulous business practices and corruption…
It’s kind of hard to imagine “shoddy” disposable chopsticks.
As the photo caption notes, the chopsticks were “recycled” and then resold without disinfecting them. But the article didn’t bother to mention that.
Reuters was too busy pointing out the moral:
A lack of business ethics and a spiritual vacuum after China embraced economic reforms in the late 1970s have been blamed for unscrupulous business practices and corruption.
Of course capitalism is to blame.
Besides, they don’t want to make recycling look bad.
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6 Responses to “Chinese Factory Sold 100,000 “Dirty Chopsticks””
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August 22nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
S&L, always a great place for a laugh first thing in the morning…
“China lacks the manpower to enforce food and drug safety regulations…”
ha ha ha, seriously when has China been at any real lack of people?
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
The Chinese haven’t had a central government that enforced the rule of law for centuries. It’s always been a corrupted system and Communism made that worse, not better.
I simply point you to the old Chinese saying, “God is in heaven, and the Emperor is far away, and by the time they find out what I’ve done, you’ll be dead. (So pay up or die).”
The best thing that can happen is that the Chinese lose some of their export market because of problems like these. That’s the only thing that will make them understand that enforcing regulations will make them more money in the long run than bribes.
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Simple solution:
Don’t eat with chopsticks!
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:44 pm
ftgf - So right, “The Chinese haven’t got the manpower…” is HILARIOUS. What the heck HAVE they got if not manpower?
And equally hilarious is the quote SG points out:
“A lack of business ethics and a spiritual vacuum after China embraced economic reforms in the late 1970s have been blamed for unscrupulous business practices and corruption.”
A spiritual vacuum? You mean, the country that outlawed any religion but Mao Worship - and that still persecutes Falun Gong and Christians - has just acquired this spiritual vacuum after having adopted economic reforms?
Hey, Reuters, get real.
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
“MADE IN CHINA” is rapidly becoming a warning label.
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:44 pm
I don’t know who the chopstick “remarketer was selling to… they might have simply been providing normal products to their own people. Have you ever been to a *real* Chinese restaurant — the kind Chinese people from China go to? If you have had that pleasure, you might have noticed the patrons of Chinese origin using their napkins not to dab their lips but to clean their chopsticks vigorously before the food arrives.
It is a shame that the Chinese system does seem to demonstrate an attitude of nonchalance where products to be shipped to non-Chinese are concerned. I daresay this sort of thing has been going on all along, but we have just begun to notice, even as we notice that most of the things we have have been made in China.
My experience has been that the Chinese really do not care about anyone else outside their immediate family, and, perhaps, their family’s ancestors (yeah, that business about respecting the elders is about putting incense in front of plaques with one’s ancestors’ names, NOT about being nice and polite, respectful of, and helpful to all old people)
The way to handle the problem here is not to decry the incidents but to bring manufacturing back into America, where our laws can govern it. We have outsourced our production so far that we are in danger of having to sew our own clothes and cut our own vegetables by hand if we disagree with China, or with the Chinese government’s policies, or if we complain about the cheap, poorly functioning, easily broken products which Chinese companies produce.
We have been capable, in the past, as individual consumers, of avoiding, or *boycotting*, cheap, poorly functioning products (Japanese products of the 60s and cheap Korean electronic equipment would be examples)… if we needed something and could afford better than the cheapest, in the past, we avoided the products which were guaranteed to be poorly made.
If we, as consumers, boycotted Chinese products, we could send the message to the companies which manufacture abroad that we are tired of this kind of treatment and the poor quality of merchandise. the message needs to arrive at the doors of the American companies, not the Chinese companies they import from or manufacture in.
I have been boycotting Chinese-made products, as far as I have been able to identify them, for years. I don’t like to buy something that is going to break down shortly, and that will have no manufacturer’s support. I prefer to buy American-made. That way I know that, in some way, the money I spend is going to build my country in some way, not to pad the fat wallets of some foreign crowd.