SHANGHAI, China (AP):
TOFU MADE from paint. Phony rabies vaccine that's nothing but saltwater. Bogus whiskey packing a toxic wood alcohol punch.
China's thriving product pirates are best known for fake DVDs and designer shirts. But they do their worst damage peddling phony medicines and foods that are widely sold and can be deadly.
Even Chinese officials say they fear for their safety following a spate of deaths and gruesome revelations.
"It's hard to know what you can eat anymore. I have the exact kind of food safety fears as ordinary citizens," Zheng Xiaoyun, director of the National Food Medicine Inspection Bureau, said on state television last week.
China's leaders were jolted into action last month following the deaths of 12 babies who were fed fake infant formula made of sugar and starch with few nutrients. Scores of malnourished infants that survived were hospitalised with swollen heads and wasted bodies.
Premier Wen Jiabao ordered a nationwide investigation. Authorities reported 137 arrests including two officials accused of covering up the sales and faking an investigation. More than 100,000 bags of fake formula sold under dozens of brand names
were seized.
Yet, new reports of 'big head babies' blamed on phony formula keep cropping up in areas throughout China, and the
formula is reportedly still on sale in many places.
"Making and selling unsafe food is so lucrative and so rampant that we don't have the means to control it," said Cai Shouqiu, head of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Law. "Everyone just wants to make money."
Victims are often China's poorest, least educated people, who know little other than that the products are cheap.
In the southern business
capital of Guangzhou, one of China's most cosmopolitan areas, at least 11 persons died this month after drinking liquor made with methanol, a toxic wood alcohol. The government says it has arrested six suppliers and is looking for 17 other persons.
John Huang, a Shanghai office worker, displayed the growing cynicism as he emerged from a suburban train station into a crowd of shouting farmers hawking lychees, kebabs and tofu cakes.
"I don't dare buy from them. All they sell is phony stuff," Huang said.
Still, he showed no aversion to other counterfeits, turning a second later to flip through a rack of pirated DVDs.
No official statistics on the human cost of fake products are available.
But in one southwestern province, Yunnan, 17 deaths from tainted food have been reported this year.
In Shanghai, illegal producers made phony tofu cakes mashed together from gypsum, paint and starch, then fried in oil made from kitchen waste, swill and intestines, the Shanghai Youth Daily newspaper reported.
The makers paid police about 9,200 yuan (US$1,100) a year to avoid inspections, according to the newspaper, which said it sent two reporters to pose as tofu merchants.
"Once a product is on shelves, it is very hard to tell what is poisonous and to get anyone to spend the time and the money to pursue a case," said Cai, the environmental law specialist.
Public outrage has prompted some punishments of negligent officials and stepped-up
inspections.
