Sewer cooking oll

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I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought this was a joke

This is why we have to do something about the inequities in this world.

In some parts of the world, people literally live off garbage.

Wikipedia has an article on this topic (link below).  I will not go into the disgusting details here.

 Link to Wikipedia Article 

This kind of scandal seems endemic to China.

Numerous "Food Safety Incidents" in China have been noted in  This Wikipedia Article .

Boiled Bat Soup, anyone?

The article shocked me as I lived on street food when I was in Asia. Whoa is me.

Some years ago a coworker who was in the US Army talked about the guidelines the army gives you about going "in country" and dining off base in Asia. And one of the rules is "eat at an established restaurant. Dont buy street vendor food."

This is true, food safety issues are throughout China (including various regions that might be considered China). But specific to this one event the OP is talking about, it's outdated AFAIK.

As far as I know, India has a similar problem. And food safety incidents in China, including "Sewer cooking oll", are actually things that happened in Japanese history. This may be a common phenomenon in areas with high population densities that are lagging behind.

What I've gathered is that the "Sewer cooking oll" crisis originally originated in Japan. After Japan began tightening government regulations in 1960, the oil was sold to Taiwan for cooking. When Taiwan's economy developed, this black industry moved to mainland China.
I wouldn't be surprised if it is hurting Vietnam right now.


This is one of the places where we believe the government should increase its control.
But it seems the government doesn't really care about these things.

I'm not sure what the situation is now. At least it seems to have improved a lot. Because there are some extremely backward regions in China, we don't really know how the industry there works.


Moreover, there is no bat soup in China. A widely circulated video of a Chinese woman eating bat soup shows her life on a trip to Southeast Asia. That's quite a shocking picture for the Chinese, too.
I have a reasonable suspicion that negative news in China excites you so much that the content doesn't need more critical thinking scrutiny.

Yes Asian countries are verious early stages in the process of industrializing. So theyre much like the US and the UK were back in the times of Dickens when we began industrializing. And the govt. didnt give a darn about workers nor consumers. Also China, India, etc, all have high population densities, and bigger urban populations than we had in either in Victorian times, or now. So protecting consumers is a bigger job.

I don't think the issue is out of date. The actual conditions for the recycling of sewer oil have not changed, There is
a) lack of proper regulation
b) high demand for a product (cooking oil)
c) especially during COVID there has been reduced supply which has added pressure to recycle

As Fnord mentioned there are many examples of food scams in China (the most memorable was the baby formula scandal) but there is a difference with places like India. In India there are clear instructions to foreigners to a) not eat street food b) not drink tap water. This is due to the risk of stomach bugs. Foreigners foolish enough to eat outside of hotels learn the hard way but at the very least after one bad experience don't do it again. In China the issue is not bacteria but slow chemical poisoning. If you watch the video I posted the presence of sewer oil (I believe across China on average its estimated 10% of all cooking oil used is supplemented with sewer oil) there are chemical contaminants from the recycling process that result in cognitive decline, tissue damage, reproductive problems and cancer.

The consumption of street food in China is widespread so this is a serious public health issue.

Specific to the issue of edible oil, because the price of soybean oil has been reduced to 7 yuan / liter (the price of drinking water is 5 yuan / liter).
So Sewer cooking oil is no longer a widespread issue because of its cost. The government began to arrest the source of the industrial chain related to Sewer Cooking Oil in large numbers ten years ago. Illegal costs are high and benefits are low.

Waste oil in a very broad sense, for example, the use of oil in fried foods too many times over and over is really a common problem.


But yes, China's overall food safety is still not optimistic. And it's systemic.
For the same food factory, the testing standards for food supplied domestically are lower than those supplied for export.

Last edited by SkinnedWolf on 29 May 2022, 3:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

How was the baby formula issue a few years ago? has it been resolved? At it's height, agents were buying shelves of baby formula in Australia and New Zealand and exporting in bulk back to China. Some of the agents would pretend to be shoppers come into stores and clear the entire stock from shopping shelves,

Mothers in Australia were struggling to find baby formula for their babies and were writing letters to their local MPs and to the stores about this issue and eventually the stores implemented limits to 2 tins per customer. This limit lasted through COVID and is still in place.

If "baby formula issue" refers to a serious problem like melamine, it was more than a decade ago. This and was dealt with seriously and a large number of companies were liquidated.

But somehow, the domestic baby formula has incomprehensible pricing (and is still lower in quality, but doesn't have serious safety issues). There are rumors that the gross profit margin of a certain brand is over 70%.
Importing baby formula is even an economical option. But not everyone has a channel to buy imported baby formula.

Judging by the fact baby formula is still empty in shopping shelves I suspect there is still a demand. CHina has the world's largest number of millionaires so I imagine those who can afford it still prefer to buy imported baby milk powder.

Higher quality, lower price. certainly.
But this cannot meet the national market demand. Buyers will scavenge everything they can find.
When mainland Chinese travel to Hong Kong, they often buy formula in large quantities, so much so that Hong Kong has to implement a policy of restricting the purchase of formula milk powder.