The day before yesterday, I was a guest at Radio Beijing, talking about the poisonous eggs in Europe. The host said that Europe has always been regarded as a template for food safety. Why did such a big thing happen. In fact, no matter which country it is, it is impossible to achieve "absolute security". For example, Germany, as a "rigorous idol" in the media, in addition to the detection of fipronil in eggs imported from the Netherlands, their native eggs have also been hit.
In 2017, the State Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) issued the No. 72 notice that 80 batches of dairy products were sampled and found that three batches were unqualified, one batch was pure milk from Germany, and the other two batches were cheese from the United States. The unqualified reason is that the microorganism exceeds the standard.
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However, fans of imported products will not care about the test results. For imported food, they will say: "It's just an accident, and people have perfect supervision and reputation" when they detect unqualified food; For domestic food, even if the test is qualified, they will say, "This batch is qualified, which does not mean that those who have not been sampled are also qualified" or "The melamine milk powder of that year is also qualified"
Trust is something that is easy to destroy but difficult to rebuild. China's dairy industry and national regulatory authorities have paid a lot of attention, and the product quality has been greatly improved, but consumers still lack trust. This is to repay the debt for the evil of that year - although, of course, the perpetrators have become history, there is still a long way to go before the trust of the industry is rebuilt.
When I forwarded the notification of the State Food and Drug Administration on my microblog, I added a comment: "As a food practitioner who has stayed abroad for many years, I hardly buy imported food in China because it is expensive, but there is no reason to match the price." Many imported food lovers were dissatisfied, and they came to their own stories Or ask whether they are washing the floor for "domestic food". (It is emphasized here that some food imports are cheaper because of the leading cultivation and breeding technology. This is a benefit brought by technology and international trade, and I may still buy it.)
This kind of conspiracy theory is very boring, but it is just unreasonable to make a fool of itself.
As a senior food R&D personnel from abroad to China, why do I feel that imported food does not match the price?
In terms of supervision, if a food is to be exported or imported, it needs to meet the regulatory requirements of both parties. In particular, importing countries tend to have more stringent supervision processes for imported food, such as qualification requirements for manufacturers, inspection and quarantine before each batch of products enters the customs. Theoretically, food imported through legal and standardized channels should not have safety problems. However, the cost of long-distance transportation, tariffs and compliance with regulatory requirements is bound to be higher. Unless the production cost of that kind of food in the exporting country is obviously low, it is inevitable that the price will be high. However, this high price is not used to improve product quality, but to pay for transportation costs, management costs, tariffs, and more distribution costs than local products.
This is particularly evident in imported fruits. In China, I never buy imported fruit. (Of course, one of the main reasons is poor...) Whether imported or domestic, the possibility of safety problems in fruits is very small. The so-called agricultural disability is often thought to create panic. Most fruits can be peeled and eaten again. Even if there is a little pesticide residue, it is not a worry. In order to meet the needs of storage and transportation, imported fruits will not take "delicious" and "nutrition" as optimization goals from variety to picking time. The advantage of imported fruit is often just that "the original monk can recite scriptures", which is more attractive and "high-grade".
Even within the shelf life, food is still in a process of "dynamic change" in essence. Inspection and quarantine can only focus on the status of key indicators at a certain point in time. Especially for microorganisms, "qualified" does not mean "qualified" in the whole shelf life. The logistics and storage conditions of imported food are more complex than those of domestic food, and there are more possible links with problems.
In other words, in terms of ensuring microbial safety, imported products have more difficulties to overcome than domestic food. It is an example that the "German preciseness" that many people worship still has excessive microorganisms.
In order to overcome these difficulties, imported food needs to pay a greater price in technology. For example, pasteurized milk, domestic milk generally has a shelf life of 7 days, but such shelf life of imported products can not be achieved, so imported "fresh milk" can only be more thoroughly sterilized. Even if it is called "fresh milk", the degree of sterilization may be different from that of domestic "fresh milk". In addition, the more logistics links, the more uncertainty. For example, in this sampling inspection, Germany's pure milk was found to have excessive microorganisms. Pure milk after ultra-high temperature sterilization and aseptic filling, theoretically, no bacteria problem should occur for how long it is kept. The event that the bacteria exceeded the standard was a bit unimaginable. This also shows that "reputation" and "image" cannot guarantee food safety, and the product quality depends on the facts.
Of course, we usually see more domestic food testing unqualified, exposed by the media illegal production and so on. This makes people lack confidence in "domestic food". In fact, take a closer look. The food exposed to problems is often the product of small and medium-sized enterprises. However, the "black workshops" and "black dens" exposed by the media have few opportunities to enter the regular supermarkets and will not become the mainstream brands in the market. There are few problems with food products whose prices and sales channels are similar to those of imported products.
[This article is a contribution from Tencent's truer platform, which is forbidden to be reproduced without authorization. More original science popularization of food health is pushed through the mobile phone account "Squirrel Cloud"]
