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Flaws in China-Kenya food, agriculture trade

fish

Kenya is yet to set up a food safety control system for Chinese food products despite the sharp increase in Chinese food imports especially fish. FILE PHOTO | NMG

China’s reputation as one of the world’s worst food safety offenders with significant effects outside its borders is well known globally.

In 2008, a Chinese company produced tainted formula milk that according to official estimates saw 300,000 babies becoming ill with at least 6 deaths of infants. The problematic issue was that the contamination was by no means a mistake but was designed to deliberately deceive quality control reviews in order to cut costs and increase revenue.

Milk suppliers chose to add melamine (a toxic compound) to adulterated milk to increase the nitrogen content and make the milk appear rich in protein since milk processors only checked protein levels by the measuring nitrogen concentration. This contamination led to children developing kidney stones and infants dying resulting in Chinese dairy products being recalled globally.

Today, a decade after the milk contamination scandal, China’s food safety record has not really improved. Heavy metal in Chinese poultry products is a worldwide concern, as well as high levels of lead and cadmium have been reported in Chinese fish. This is because China still burns huge quantities of coal which releases lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic.

In the wake of this reality, many countries have established need assessment food safety control systems in their bilateral food trade with China. Unfortunately for the Kenyan consumers, the country is yet to set up a food safety control system for Chinese food products despite the sharp increase in Chinese food imports especially fish.

Now, a few days ago, China finally agreed to allow various agricultural products from Kenya to preferentially access the Chinese market in an effort to address the heavy imbalance of trade between the two countries and according to the President’s Chief of Staff who was part of the negotiations, the two countries have already entered into formal sanitary and phytosanitary agreements.

This is good news because the crux of an agricultural trade deal is in the sanitary and phytosanitary agreements. What this means is that Kenya needs to rise to the occasion and use this opportunity to push for broader joint safety control systems.

Though sanitary and phytosanitary agreements basically cover agricultural products and doesn’t specifically address food safety nor provide food control system, it largely provides the legal framework to set up internationally accepted food safety standards that facilitates trade of both food and agricultural products between the two countries whilst addressing safety risks.

But the Achilles heel in establishing a joint food safety control system is that China just like Kenya also has a safety enforcement shortcoming not because of ineffective laws but rather ineffective enforcement.

For example: going back to the 2008 milk contamination scandal, the defendants were sentenced to life in prison and two men sentenced to death for endangering the public, and four months later a Food and Safety law was passed. But a few months later, melamine was again found in milk in China. Many other food safety scandals still continue to rock China to date. Like in 2014, a supplier to leading fast food brands including McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut was discovered using expired meat in their products.

So, the starting point in negotiating for a better food safety regulation will be the two countries admitting that they both have a food safety standards problem then borrow better control systems from Europe and US who possess the best food safety records. For example: the US-China Food Safety agreement is being used as the best model of international trade regulation practices.

But, sadly, the Chinese government has always failed to admit its food safety failing and chosen to vigorously defend it despite overwhelming evidence of poor food safety record. Therefore, setting up a tight joint food safety control system protecting public health of Kenyan consumers through bilateral co-operation with China will prove to be a difficult task.