The commonly seen Laiyifen, which sells titbits, sweets and preserved fruits, is now embroiled in this new food safety scandal along with other preserved fruits retailers. Laiyifen's rapturous logo won't reflect the moods of their shareholders and management anymore. more ›

Banned pesticides have been detected in Lipton, the world's best-selling tea brand as well as other Chinese domestic brands, claims Greenpeace. more ›

Zhao Pu, a CCTV anchorman, made enemies in the yogurt and jelly industries early last week when he spoke his mind on Weibo, advising consumers to stay away from the possibly suspect confectioneries: “You never eat solid yogurt or jelly ever again, especially the kids. The inside story is horrible, but I won’t go into details.” more ›

If you thought regular gutter oil was abhorrent, how about this latest case where authorities nabbed over 100 members of a ring in Zhejiang responsible for producing a new type of swill oil made from animal hides, bones, and innards. Not to mention that the oil was reportedly being distributed in several parts of China, including Anhui, Jiangsu, Chongqing and Shanghai! more ›

Recently, news reports have claimed the Chinese national marathon team has been raising their own chickens at their training facilities in Yunnan province, with coaches even reportedly tending to the chickens themselves. With athletes at the mercy of doping tests, the self-raised chickens were part of an effort to avoid any chance of chemical contamination in the marathon team's food supply before the London Olympics begin in July. more ›

The Wall Street Journal talks to Shi Kang, a successful writer who's caught the America Bug after taking a 60,000km road trip across the US last year. Shi waxes wistfully about the usual motivations Chinese people have for wishing to emigrate: cleaner air, better food safety, a decent education for kids and cheaper BMW SUV's (Shi apparently has yet to learn the concept of renting, since he purchased a car specifically for his road trip). more ›

2012 is looking to be par-for-the-course in China's food industry. So far we've already seen cancerous peanuts, flies mushed into pork jerky, and condoms both in yogurt and made of yogurt. This time around, the fake egg scare has come back again with a vengeance, as a man in Yantai, Shandong has unfortunately discovered. more ›

Like a black fly in your chardonnay pork jerky... isn't it ironic? A Shanghai netizen uploaded photos today showing a dead fly sealed and smushed into their Laiyifen brand pork jerky - adding yet another sad story to China's ongoing battle with food safety. more ›

What's worse than making a condom out of yogurt? How about finding a condom in your yogurt? Wednesday afternoon in Guangzhou, a woman bought 4 boxes of yogurt, and discovered a condom swimming in one of the cartons of yogurt... after she took a bite. more ›

Food safety regulators in Shenzhen, Guangdong, say they've found carcinogenic mildew in peanuts and cooking oil more ›

Mengniu, one of the largest dairy producers in China and a culprit in the 2008 melamine scandal, has been caught with tainted milk once again. Carcinogenic toxins were found in their milk last week, and last night their website was hacked, presumably in response to the contamination. more ›

Next time you're in need of some... "protection," don't bother running to the nearest Family Mart, just reach for a bottle of Wahaha's newest yogurt drink Nutri-Express! Netizens were aghast and amused this week at a blog post showing how a bottle of Nutri-Express can be turned into a latex-like substance resembling a condom. more ›

Rarely do we see a positive story in the stream of food safety headlines in China. Fortunately, some new regulations regarding allergens will be put on the books this spring. Food authorities will soon require prepackaged food producers to list all potential allergy-inducing ingredients on their product labels. more ›

A man living in Tongzhou District in Beijing this week reports a story very similar to that of a Pudong woman in April: after purchasing a chunk of meat from a local vegetable market, he later discovered that it was glowing blue in the dark! more ›

China's quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, says that 19 products, including Lipton Tieguanyin (pictured on the right) have been found to contain excessive levels of potentially harmful rare-earth minerals in a random check of 58 oolong products from Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian and Guangdong. Five of these brands are manufactured by Shanghai-based companies and they are: Mingfeng, Jiaranlu, Zhengxiangyuan, Cuiming and Shenxin. more ›

Weibo is just atwitter with food related "scandals" today, so we've collected some here for your perusal: more ›

A man surnamed Wang living in Qingdao, Shandong Province claims that he has found a worm in a can of Frisolac milk powder imported from Holland. The dealer promises to return the powder and send him another 400g can free. However, when Wang asked for higher compensation, the dealer says it is only possible when the worm is proven to be Dutch. more ›

We learned about these dangerous batches of eels coming in from Indonesia and the Phillipines earlier this year harboring a dangerous brain-damaging parasite called gnathostoma spinigerum. Thankfully we've been reassured that Shanghai eels are clear of parasites, which can't be said for all neighboring provinces. In fact, it's not just our eels that might be safer. On Sunday, the major of Shanghai proclaimed that he plans to lead the country in food safety, adopting "the 'toughest' measures on food industry market access, supervision, law enforcement and punishment." more ›

A recent test of local milk tea and fresh juice samples conducted by the Shanghai Commission of Consumer Rights and Interests Protection revealed alarmingly high levels of bacteria. Out of 40 specimens, 12 fresh juice samples were found to contain large amounts of some bacteria types while 16 milk tea samples tested positive for high levels of E. coli, a microbe infamous for causing severe diarrhea or lā dùzi, as it is referred to locally. And you thought you only had to stay away from unwashed fruit and tap water. more ›

Welcome to our humble restaurant! To start you off tonight, our anonymous chef has prepared an appetizer of his "four recommendations for eating in China" after which you will be free to dive into your main course: pictures of scary additives and scarier food prep. Bon apetit! more ›

Yuck! Would you look at that?! Sorry to put this set of pictures up during lunchtime, but we just had to show you this. Last Friday, Kunming police busted into an illegal "swill oil" processing factory which is said to process up to 1 ton of swill oil per day. The "processed" swill oil was sold for RMB7.30 per kilo, and from records discovered by the police, this factory sold close to 50 tons of swill oil between June and August alone, and made over RMB300,000. more ›

Let's do a quick recap of all the major food safety news so far this year: We've got cadmium in our rice, steamed buns that are actually recycled, "beef" that's actually pork, epilepsy-causing eels, cancer-causing fruit juice, cholera-inducing frogs, worm eggs in our mineral water, and exploding watermelons. If all that's still not enough to make you want to stop eating and drinking for the rest of your time in China, here's more. more ›

If this can happen in Chongqing, what are the chances that it's also happening at Walmart's outlets in Shanghai and elsewhere in China too? You tell me:

The Chongqing Industry and Commerce Administration launched an investigation into the supermarket chain after receiving complaints that ordinary pork was sold as organic at higher price, Chongqing Evening News reported yesterday. more ›

During a spot check by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), six different types of bottled water were discovered to contain elevated amounts of the chemical compound bromate, a byproduct of the water sterilization process which, in excess, could lead to cancer. Among the water producers that are feeding you cancer water are Harbin Pharmaceutical Group and Jingyou Honghu Mineral Products Co Ltd. According to stuff we've read, excessive consumption of bromate may result in symptoms such as "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain" as well as other scary stuff. 18 other brands of bottled/barelled water failed to meet general quality standards, as AQSIQ found high levels of not only bacteria (something we've worried about before) but free chlorine and strontium as well. A total of 220 different bottled/barreled water from 211 companies in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province were tested during the spot check. more ›

The venue in question is Xinwang Restaurant located inside Infinity Plaza, on downtown Huaihai Road. Management and staff were just as confused as everyone else regarding the origin of the needle, and are currently conducting an "investigation" -- China-speak for, "if we give it enough time maybe everyone will just forget." more ›

If the Shanghai Municipal Food & Drug Inspection Institute is to be believed, those employee allegations of gross things being done to your fried chicken (reusing oil, dirty chicken meat) were all just disgruntled grumblings. From China Daily: "On Tuesday, the workers with the institute conducted tests on the oil used by some KFC restaurants in Shanghai to deep-fry chips and chicken, in response to recent media reports that criticize KFC over its use of oil. The test results showed that all main indexes of KFC's cooking oil meet national standards." Speaking of KFC, some Shanghainese white collar workers recently discovered that a KFC family combo here, at 65rmb, is actually more expensive than a square meter plot of land in Miami, Florida. Something to think about before you dial 4008823823. more ›

Employees at several KFCs in Beijing have come out with some pretty disgusting allegations against China's favorite fried chicken chain. Four-day-old re-used cooking oil and dirty dripping bloody chicken meat about sums it up. Re-using oil is a common practice in restaurants, but health codes demand it be tested to monitor for chemical build-up, something they are claiming wasn't being done. The employees also say KFC is under-frying its chicken, and re-using burgers that have sat out too long by simply replacing the toppings. KFC, of course, flat out denies these allegations, and claims their chicken is clean, their oil is tested, and their old food is discarded. more ›

Alright everyone, please take out your scorecards for the latest round of China Food Scandal Bingo! Just a quick recap, so far we've had tainted mantou buns, glow-in-the-dark pork, pork that's being sold as "beef," relabeling expired meat, cancer-causing juice from Taiwan and - of course, the oldie but goodie - milk tainted with melamine! I know you're all eagerly anticipating today's scandal so here it is: vinegar created from industrial-grade acid! Any Bingos yet? more ›

You might want to put down that bottle of water you're drinking, or at least check the caps, if recent larvae-related allegations are to be believed! A father and son claim that they opened sealed bottles of Nongfu spring water in Tongzhuo, Bejing on Thursday and found worm eggs inside the caps. The boy, who apparently screamed after taking a gulp of water then seeing the eggs, experienced diarrhea and vomiting and was later diagnosed with acute enteritis. Nongfu has responded by releasing the following statement: ""It never happened. The worm eggs were actually on the outside of the bottles, not the inside." The shopkeeper maintains that they opened more bottles and found more eggs, and she refused to return the suspect bottles (which were bottled in Jilin province in June) when Nongfu delivery men came back to pick them up. First it was bacteria in Beijing bottles earlier this month, and now this! Maybe we should just drink imports. Or then again maybe not... more ›