Online Food Safety Scandal List Wins Applause in China

Non-stop food safety scandals in China have led to a chorus of shouts for change. A Fudan University postgraduate student has recently set up an online data base on China's food safety issues, the first one compiled by ordinary citizens.

Let's take a closer look with our reporter Liu Min.

Milk filled with melamine which killed babies, seasoning mixed with toxic chemicals like Sudan Red, and oil extracted from waste being used in restaurants…food safety scandals in China seem to just keep coming.

Wu Heng, a Fudan University postgraduate student, together with volunteers, collected news reports about unsafe foods and posted them on their website for the public to consult. Wu Heng says he wants to get the government's attention, and inform ordinary people about food safety problems in China.

"It's just like how a frog will slowly die in heating water before it feels pain. Chinese people seem to have gotten used to reading reports like these and gradually they have accepted them as commonplace. But I hope everyone can become outraged again and refuse to live like this. We can't be silent any more."

Wu Heng and his 33 volunteers collected more than 2,100 articles and made 2,800 entries on the website they established. The website is called "Zhi Chu Chuang Wai"or "Throw the bad food out of the window". The unsafe foods in the data bank are categorized according to the reasons why they are considered unsafe, such as out of expiry dates, tainted with illegal additives, made with poor-quality ingredients, manufactured by unlicensed producers, failing to meet hygiene requirements, poor packaging quality and so on.

At first Wu Heng was doing the job on his own, but later he discovered that is a mission impossible. He posted a notice on his blog in May, seeking volunteers to help him. Within just one day, he had received more than 30 responses: 22 of them were people born after 1980, while another three were born after 1990. One high-school student had also applied to participate. A netizen surnamed Zong who read the reports on the webstie says he admires Wu Heng and his team's courage.

"A university student even knows to do something concerning the food safety issues for the public health, how about the food safety administration departments? Don't they have more responsibility to find better ways to provide a healthy environment for citizens?"

Such a data base with thousands of reports has not been done by the government, nor by the media or any professional associations, but by the hand of a university student. Many say the government should feel ashamed for failing the public on the issue. Many netizens say the report itself represents a kind of public service, and represents a kind of social responsibility being exhibited by today's Chinese youth.

Wu Heng is still quite optimistic about the future of food safety environment in China.

"I think it's the worst time as well as the best time. It's the worst time because food safety problems happen in almost every where in the country to all kinds of food. It's the best time because there are media reports on these problems. This is a progress itself. It let people know what's happening. This is the first step towards solving the problem."

Wu Heng and his co-workers have set up a Darwin Prize for the worst food scandal selected by readers from a list of stories posted on the website. A cash prize of 1.4 yuan will be presented to the writer of the winning story. Somewhat ironically, 1.4 yuan or 0.2 US Dollars sounds like the characters for "dying together" in Mandarin. Wu Heng said all of us will be eventually killed by these harmful foods unless everyone steps forward and speaks out.

For CRI, I'm Liu Min.