By Li Hongmei People's Daily Online

Nobody needs an explanation if he happens to hear of the joke, which says the Chinese are much more knowledgeable than they were in chemicals' know-how. In recent years, especially, some chemical terms have almost become household words among the ordinary Chinese in the wake of an unstoppable chain of food poisoning scandals. Beyond doubt, pursuing massive production at the lowest possible cost and for the maximum profit should be the worst offense to blame. But serious flaws are also exposed in the monitoring system of the nation's food supply. On top of this, moral crisis and the lemon market also contribute to China's food safety woes.

Take infant formula scandal, the San Lu dairy and other milk giant groups have for years lowered the prices to buy in fresh milk, which severely harms the interests of cow farmers and lures them to devise ways to dilute milk to gain some margin, the use of chemical additives being among them. Meanwhile, a morbid and fierce competition plaguing the entire milk industry and involving all the milk groups is unfolded nationwide, with competitors fighting one another in whatever way they could imagine for a larger market share. This has inevitably evolved into a vicious circle, in which costs will be constantly brought down, and to beat rivals and win a slice of market, milk groups will have to squander a good part of their revenues on advertising and marketing. The price will be finally paid for by consumers, and it has already proven much too high.

The so-called 'big-head' syndrome erupted among babies in 2005, as a result of serious malnutrition induced by yet another fake milk powder. In 2008, kidney stone was found again among babies due to drinking San Lu baby formula contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical used to produce plastics. Besides, the list of contaminated food now gracing the Chinese dining table can be a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden vegetables and fruits, water-injected pork and beef, drug-laced wheat and rice and, chicken and eggs contaminated with salmonella. People nowadays can hardly put down their worry even when they are just drinking an innocent bottle of water.

The double-digital economic growth for nearly three decades has to some degree fulfilled people's basic needs of food and clothing; and the Chinese are currently in an unprecedented frenzy of seeking wealth. Human desire is such that if you feed it, it grows. The insatiate appetite for profit can be the undoing for businesses, which will give rise to the neglect of human life and the decline of public morality, and thus was born the moral crisis poisoning the whole community. In addition, failure to inform will result in a consumer 'lemon market,' a term frequently used to describe a market with asymmetric information, or simply put, market-based products deceiving their consumers. Because lemons have thick skin, consumers remain oblivious to whether they have bought a rotten or fresh lemon until they return home and dissect the fruit with a knife.

It is unfair to consumers, indeed, considering the facts that consumers have the right to broad information on the ingredients and manufacturing techniques of their purchases, and consumers will likely come to trust a producer if its products are self-informative, leading to a mutually beneficial relationship. But our consumers remain largely uninformed of their food products' ingredients, and parents have no way of knowing whether their babies are being fed harmful milk until the babies get sick.

Therefore, the outburst of a series of food safety scandals is just calling for the engagement of public powers and the enhancement of the government's role, as the government and relevant departments are duty-bound to ensure the validity of the products tests and inform the public of their findings. The government's failure to provide this vital information benefits no one but the irresponsible producers. Not only will this malpractice harm consumers' faith in products, tarnish the reputation of the whole industry in question, but in a long run, the government may lose credibility among the public.

China's government has been trying to restore confidence in the country's food supply ever since revelations in September of the tainted baby formula. National People's Congress, the top legislature, passed a tough new food safety law Saturday, promising tougher penalties for makers of contaminated products, which include fines, cancellation of licenses and punitive damages up to 10 times the value of products implicated. Besides, companies and individuals can also be held liable for medical and other compensations as well as face criminal charges.

It is still too early to say whether toughened measures will come to fruition in prospect. But it is believed that China has been fully aware of the fact that the insurance of quality products and consumer welfare will benefit its emerging economy and help build its credibility worldwide.