Word: problem
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First, a tainted product emerges, killing some and sickening many more. Its origin is traced to China, where a combination of greed and negligence allow the danger to slip into the food chain. The government downplays or ignores the risks. When the problem becomes so big it can't be denied, leadership orders inspections and promises to punish wrongdoers. The new vigilance leads to other risky products being identified, but officials suggest the problems aren't systemic - just the work of a few bad eggs. The state tightens inspections on imports and finds a few tainted products from overseas...
...Hong Kong authorities announced that eggs imported from the mainland also contained melamine, the result of tainted feed given to chickens. Beijing ordered widespread testing of animal feed, and discovered 3,600 tons of contaminated product. The country's agriculture minister, Sun Zhengcai, called the tainted eggs an isolated problem. And the state press trumpeted news that sauces tainted with toxic chemicals were imported from three Japanese factories...
...touched off when the death of more than 100 Panamanians was traced back to cough medicine tainted with dietheylene glycol from China. Then hundreds of pets in North America were killed by eating food made from Chinese raw ingredients, also tainted with melamine. As last year's scandal spread, problems were found with Chinese-produced toys, tires, seafood and toothpaste. Even as the Beijing took extreme steps to solve the problem, such as executing Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, for accepting $850,000 in bribes from drug companies, it aggressively pushed back against...
...year later, that foreign criticism of China's food safety problems doesn't seem so groundless. Now Chinese consumers are asking why the government can't seem to get control of a problem like toxic foods, or even a specific contaminant like melamine that has now become painfully common. "Everyone has asked why this country that can send an astronaut into space and have the most successful Olympic Games cannot provide safe milk to its own children," says Dali Yang, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. While Yang acknowledges that ethical failures...
...Nestle says, it was likely that it would appear in animal feed and eventually human food. "You can't separate the food supplies of animals, pets and people," she says. "That's an enormous warning sign that if something wasn't done immediately to clean up the food safety problem, this would leak into the human food supply...