SHANGHAI, Oct. 29 — The Chinese government said today that it had arrested 774 people over the past two months as part of a nationwide crackdown on the production and sale of tainted food, drugs and agricultural products.
Government regulators hailed the arrests as a major step forward for food and drug safety, and said the “criminal suspects†were detained during nationwide inspections of thousands of restaurants, food and drug production facilities and wholesale food markets.
Determined to counter accusations that it has been producing and even exporting tainted goods, China vowed earlier this year to revamp its food and drug safety regulations and to close down illegal manufacturers and exporters.
Last summer, the government even executed the former head of the nation’s food and drug administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, after he was convicted of accepting bribes and failing to properly supervise food and drug companies, some of which had sold counterfeit drugs.
But the government also acknowledged today that problems remain. As of earlier this month, it said, only 82 percent of the food tested in medium and large cities in China met food safety standards, and nearly 30 percent of the restaurants surveyed by regulators had failed food safety inspections.
The announcement of the arrests, which was made over the weekend but was not posted on a government web site until today, offered few details about the nature and seriousness of the food and drug safety violations involved. The government said only that it had investigated 626 criminal cases.
The arrests came after nearly a year of high-profile recalls involving everything from tainted pet food ingredients to problem toys, and after repeated promises on the part of government regulators to crack down on tainted goods and restore confidence in the Made in China label.
As part of its effort, the government is also trying to counter widespread concerns that the quality and safety of the food and drugs sold to its own citizens is far worse than the products it exports.
In fact, China acknowledged earlier this year that while it believes 99 percent of its food exports meet safety standards, only about 80 percent of the food sold domestically has passed inspections.
Today, the government said that a four-month campaign to root out bad food and drug producers and sellers was paying dividends.
“This action of inspecting food safety demonstrates our determination, and we should make every effort to further consolidate our previous work,†Li Changjiang, the head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection & Quarantine said, according to a statement published on a government web site. “We will carry out inspections throughout the country to safeguard our people’s living standard.â€
In a separate announcement today, China’s Ministry of Agriculture said that it was revoking the registration of 11 highly toxic pesticides because of food safety concerns.
In several cases, the pesticides were banned from use in China, but were nonetheless manufactured in the country for export. Government regulators said they were worried that the banned pesticides were finding their way back into the Chinese market.
The government also said this week that since July, inspectors working at Chinese ports have destroyed or recalled over 1,000 tons of fake products.
China is also working with American and European regulators to cooperate on product safety and to put into place new methods to detect harmful products.
The government has called this a “special battle†to save the Made in China label.
The problems began earlier this year, after American pet food makers recalled millions of tons of pet-food ingredients that were tainted with industrial chemicals imported from China. Later, the United States Food and Drug Administration blocked imports of some Chinese seafood, including shrimp and eel, because of recurring problems with residues of illegal chemicals, including cancer-causing substances.
Then regulators and safety inspectors around the world began turning up toxic toothpaste from China and Chinese-made toys coated in lead paint, which can be harmful if ingested by small children, leading to global recalls.
The crisis led to worldwide calls for stepped-up food security and toy safety regulations, prompted some consumers to begin avoiding Chinese-made goods and led to calls in Congress for a ban on some Chinese imports.
Trade statistics, though, show that with few exceptions, China’s exports to the rest of the world continue to soar, even exports of toys, seafood and agricultural products.
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