Recently, the founder of Hammer Technology, Luo Yonghao, and the Xibei chain restaurant crossed swords from a distance, bringing the issue of pre-packaged meals back into the spotlight in Chinese society. Why do pre-packaged meals make the Chinese people turn pale when they hear about them? Why do food safety issues persist and remain rampant in China? What even more alarming food safety issues have surfaced in China recently? In this episode, we will discuss with you.
Hello everyone, I am Tang Hao. How are you all doing today?
A few days ago, Luo Yonghao, the founder of Hammer Technology, publicly criticized the large chain restaurant in China, Xibei, for not cooking on-site but using factory-produced “pre-packaged meals.” This news immediately caused a stir across China. The largest flagship store of Xibei in Beijing, Six Liqiao, saw a 70% decrease in customer traffic.
Xibei’s owner, Jia Guolong, immediately stepped forward to clarify, saying that they would seek legal redress and also announced that all nationwide stores would openly show the production process in the kitchen for everyone to supervise. This crisis was handled very decisively. However, just two days later, Xibei suspended the open kitchen, publicly apologized, and announced that several dishes would now be prepared on-site in the store. The incident has temporarily come to a close.
However, our focus is not on discussing whether Xibei serves pre-packaged meals but on caring about China’s food safety issues through the lens of pre-packaged meals. So, in today’s program, we want to tell you three things:
1. Why do pre-packaged meals in China make people turn pale when they hear about them?
2. Why do food safety issues in China persist and remain rampant?
3. What are the even more shocking food safety issues?
Pre-packaged meals, as the name suggests, are pre-prepared dishes or semi-finished products that are heated or cooked before consumption. This is a common food processing technique, such as meal kits, seasoning packs, or frozen pizzas sold in supermarkets, etc. For many working individuals, they may not have time to cook after work, so they opt for these pre-packaged meals to quickly prepare a meal.
Generally, qualified pre-packaged meals have strict food regulations and technical requirements, such as vacuum-sealed packaging, high-temperature and high-pressure sterilization, frozen storage, etc., and they must also meet the inspection standards of health authorities. In Taiwan, for example, frozen meal kits and ready-to-eat foods have stringent microbiological testing standards to ensure food quality and consumer safety. So, why do pre-packaged meals in China make people turn pale when they hear about them? Let’s watch a video.
Did you see that? When you eat such pre-packaged meals, are you eating food or chemicals? Making these dishes requires culinary skills or high technology? As we know, the Chinese authorities have been lax in managing food safety, and to this day, there is still no “national standard regulation” specifically for pre-packaged meals. Even if there were regulations someday, the question remains as to whether they would be implemented in practice.
Therefore, hearing about pre-packaged meals in China often raises several concerns:
1. Are the ingredients fresh and safe?
2. Is the pre-packaged meal truly what it claims to be? For example, as mentioned in the video, the “pot-wrapped pork,” which should be made of pork, was found to be made with chicken instead.
3. How many “technological tricks” are used in pre-packaged meals? Eating a dish feels like attending a chemistry class, consuming a bunch of chemical elements that the teacher never taught. Could this pose a health hazard? Moreover, many restaurants now use a large amount of pre-packaged meals and chemical seasonings. Unless you monitor the kitchen, you can hardly tell what you are eating.
Videos exposing these “technological tricks” are rampant on the internet and can be easily found, streaming for hours. So, consider getting a watchdog as your “food safety guard.” If the dog ignores something, eat less of it or avoid it altogether.
Now, you might wonder, why do food safety issues in China persist? For example, the melamine-tainted milk powder incident in 2008 affected 300,000 infants. More recently, many areas in China reported finding rat heads in the food, and there were incidents where tankers used for transporting chemicals were later filled with edible oil.
In July this year, a kindergarten in Gansu suffered from lead poisoning caused by the addition of inedible pigments in the food, resulting in over 200 people being poisoned. Hangzhou also had an incident of suspected “fecal water” contamination of tap water, causing a great uproar. Now, with the Xibei incident, the safety issues concerning pre-packaged meals have once again become a national focus.
We are not saying that there are no food safety issues elsewhere; it’s just that why are food safety problems in China so frequent and on such a massive scale? Some say it’s because China is still developing, and food safety regulations are not mature enough. Yes, that is a superficial reason, but definitely not the root cause. From my perspective, food safety issues in China are not just about legal issues but rather systemic issues. How so?
First, in the 70-plus years of Communist Party rule, traditional culture was destroyed through the Cultural Revolution, religious beliefs were cleansed with atheism, social morals were corrupted, resulting in the distortion of human nature and a lack of belief in the consequences of right and wrong. People dare to do anything when their hearts lack righteousness.
As a stark contrast, consider Taiwan. Taiwan has also reported food safety issues, but they are relatively fewer. Besides having mature sanitary regulations, the most critical factor is that many Taiwanese respect gods, especially in business, where they pray to the divine for smooth business operations and safety every year.
Think about it, if you have to pray to gods for business success, would you dare to put harmful additives in food? Would you not worry that the gods might see and punish or not bless you? Certainly, the fear of divine retribution imposes a certain moral restraint on individuals, making them refrain from misconduct.
Conversely, in a society that lacks belief in the divine and moral restrictions, people may do anything for profit. This is why China has become a society where “everyone harms everyone.” Many people may think, “This food has some ‘technological tricks,’ do not let my family eat it, sell it to others.” If everyone thinks this way, although they may not harm themselves directly, they ultimately harm others and themselves. Isn’t this a case of reaping what one sows?
The second reason is that the Communist Party’s rule is based on a “ruffian system” that prioritizes power above all and personal rule over the rule of law, making it difficult for regulatory standards to be implemented.
In simple terms, if you have connections or a certain level of relationship with the management, regardless of how fierce your pre-packaged meal is or whether your food is filled with all the elements of the periodic table, it doesn’t matter. This is also why many food safety cases end up inconclusive and unresolved due to influences behind the scenes.
Thirdly, under the high-pressure rule of the Chinese Communist Party, where power reigns supreme, there is a lack of supervision and checks, leading the Party to not solve problems but to eliminate those who raise issues.
This phenomenon should be clear to all. For example, as mentioned earlier, the “fecal water” incident in Hangzhou, official sources vehemently denied it was a “fecal water contamination” issue, attributing it to “algae” decomposition causing odor. Authorities even took action against an alleged internet user spreading “false information.”
Moreover, the Chinese authorities often block public safety-related discussions, data, and media reports, creating a nationwide “chilling effect.” This results in citizens having no power to supervise the government or officials regarding food safety issues associated with the government, leading to cases being swept under the rug or hastily concluded. However, the underlying problems remain unresolved and are likely to recur in the future.
Another reason is that under the high-pressure rule of the Chinese Communist Party, the entire society is shrouded in a pervasive atmosphere of “deception” and “false struggles,” turning China into a “dishonest society.” The people do not trust the government, nor do they trust each other, making it impossible to establish an effective public trust system.
Thus, even if some “pre-packaged meal regulations” or “national certifications” are introduced in the future, can the people truly trust them? Will the people really willingly abide by regulations? It seems unlikely.
Therefore, due to these reasons, food safety issues in China persist. The most innocent people, the consumers, are left to choose between “consumption of toxins” and “silence equals guilt.” If you were in their shoes, what choice would you make? Feel free to leave a comment and let us know.
Now, the following segment may sound sensational, but everything we discuss is evidence-based and not a conspiracy theory to smear China. On the contrary, we aim to expose the truth behind the Communist Party’s rule.
Do you remember? In the past two years, there have been several incidents of people finding “rat heads” in their food across various regions in China. The media always focused on the authorities pinning it on “duck neck,” but have you ever wondered why only rat heads are discovered, but not rat meat?
Rat meat has long been processed and passed off as lamb or beef, being sold across the country. The People’s Daily reported such news back in 2013. So, is the beef or lamb you eat in China, really beef or lamb?
Even more alarming, last year in Liuzhou, Guangxi, an internet user found a steel nail on top of the meat in their meat soup. On closer inspection by experts, it turned out to be a titanium nail used in human orthopedic surgery. Would an animal be injured with such a nail attached to its body?
Many started suspecting that human remains, stolen and sold, were used as substitute meat in restaurants. Moreover, at a company’s canteen in Weihai, Shandong, consumers found a piece of meat with dense hair coverage that resembled human hair more than animal hair, causing great shock.
In addition, in Guangxi, there were reports of someone finding what seemed to be human teeth in the ham sausage they were eating. Such incidents are mind-boggling. Furthermore, in August last year, a company in Shanxi was exposed for engaging in illegal trafficking of corpses in multiple provinces, dismembering and processing the bodies to make “human bone implant materials.” Following this revelation, many people couldn’t help but wonder if the flesh stripped from those bodies might have been sold on the market.
Coincidentally, during a military parade in China last year, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin discussed organ transplants, garnering worldwide attention and leading many to speculate about the organ harvesting industry in China. Subsequently, someone leaked information on local conditions through the internet.
The article stated: “After organ harvesting, the discarded bodies are also used for more profitable purposes: brains are made into brain supplements, hair into wigs, skin for transplantation, human oil for cosmetics, flesh into ingredients for cooked food factories, bones for dental materials… And most of it can only be obtained by central state-owned enterprises, national enterprises, and major companies with certain connections.”
Well, we cannot verify the details of this leaked content, but these details are indeed alarming. Logically speaking, such possibilities exist. It is a fact that the organ harvesting of people by the Chinese Communist Party for profit is real. So, what about the discarded bodies after organ removal? Have unscrupulous officials used them for trading and profit? Is the corporate scandal in Shanxi related to this industry chain?
In conclusion, we hope such atrocities do not occur in China, and we wish for food safety for the Chinese people. However, faced with a series of bizarre revelations, should we not be more vigilant and cautious? After all, the history of the past 70-plus years has shown that the Chinese Communist Party “can conceive of anything and achieve everything.”
Red chaos drama fades away,
The haze of a hundred years is dispersing,
People’s hearts gradually awaken to light,
At the darkest hour, a dawn breaks,
A timeless dream awakens to a clear universe,
― Tang Hao
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