More on the food scandals gripping China - news just in that the majority of food production, handled by mom-and-pop producers, do not meet even rudimentary safety standards. An article on Asia News Network carries the story on why you can't trust anything you eat in the country:

Indeed, a study last year on China's food safety strategy, led by the State Council's Development Research Centre revealed a number of problems contributing to food-safety breaches. They include excessive and improper use of pesticides, the existence of many unqualified small-scale food companies and inadequate food-safety technology.

But the overriding reason food contamination occurs so often, food safety experts here and abroad say, is that the regulatory system cannot keep up with the fast growing food industry.

In 2003, the output value of China's food industry reached 1.29 trillion yuan (US$161.62 billion), nearly 20 per cent up on 2002. In the first six months of last year, the industry achieved an output value of nearly 710 billion yuan ($421.95 billion), a 20 per cent increase over the same period in 2003.

But reports in the local press say more than 70 per cent of China's 106,000 registered food makers are family-run outfits of fewer than 10 people. And at least 60 per cent of these cannot meet basic sanitary standards.

Professor Luo Yunbo, dean of China Agricultural University's college of food science and nutritional engineering said: "China does not lack regulations, but there's a lack of unified supervision and control."

In the first half of the year, several food scandals involving big names such as KFC and Nestle, hogged headlines and shook consumer confidence.

Some KFC products were reported to be tainted with Sudan-I, a cancer-causing dye, and some of Nestle's infant milk powder formulas were found to contain iodine levels higher than the national standard.

Both companies took the products off the shelves, apologised to consumers and conducted investigations to root out the source of the contamination.