Food Safety Top Concern for Shanghai Residents
Pick up a copy of Shanghai Daily or China Daily and almost everyday there is an article about food safety - either reporting how the Chinese authorities are cracking down on the violators, or a newly discovered food scandal within China.
In the past week Shanghai Daily and China Daily both reported on on a food safety web site called Zhi Chu Chuang Wai (Throw It Out of the Window, http://zccw.info referring to bad food) documenting and geographically mapping out food scandals nationwide since 2004. The website has a record of the latest 2,300 food problems in the country, with detailed reports and victim numbers. It maps different areas with different colors to show the degree of food problems.
The web site ranked Shanghai as the 4th worst city in China in terms of the number of the food safety scandals with Beijing ranked at the top.
Some recently documented headlines are:
Cabbage in the Shandong province sprayed with formaldehyde - 5/8/2012.
Authorities to focus on food safety after the recent scadals - 5/8/2012
Leeks Sprayed with Copper Sulfate on 5/9/2012
UK cancer puts Shanghai on Alert - 4/23/2012