China’s food safety watchdog has ordered inspections of cooking oil nationwide as reports yesterday said up to one-tenth of Chinese supplies were illegally made and contained cancer-causing agents.
The State Food and Drug Administration on Thursday ordered stepped up inspections of all food service providers and vowed to punish manufacturers producing “drainage oil,” or cooking oil refined from discarded kitchen waste.
“If food service providers are found to be using cooking oil from an unclear source, or if they have bought ‘drainage oil,’ their operations will be immediately halted and they will be dealt with in accordance with the law,” the order posted on the administration’s Web site said.
The China Daily said as much as one-tenth of cooking oil used in China could be made from recycled kitchen or restaurant waste oil, which contains a highly toxic, carcinogenic substance called aflatoxin.
“People in China consume about 2 to 3 million tonnes of illegal cooking oil every year,” the China Youth Daily cited He Dongping (何東平), a food science expert at the Wuhan Polytechnic University, as saying.
China annually consumes about 22.5 million tonnes of cooking oil, he said.
He said the illegal cooking oil business is extremely profitable as the cost of buying food waste and refining it is low, while edible oil prices were rising.
China’s food industry is notoriously prone to food safety scares.
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