【10.03.02 纽约时报】Officials in China at Odds Over Food Scandal

青蛙小王子

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/asia/03hainan.html?ref=asia
SANYA, China — A widening national toxic food scandal that has its roots in this tropical island resort area in the South China Sea has set off a rare case of public sniping between officials.
The scandal, which has been reported by official news organizations in the last few days, is centered on the cowpea — an ancient species of legume that includes the black-eyed pea.
Since late February, batches of cowpeas from the lush Sanya area of the island of Hainan have tested positive for a highly toxic pesticide, isocarbophos, that is banned from use on fruits and vegetables, according to a report on Tuesday in China Daily, the official English-language newspaper. Tainted cowpeas from here have been found in the provinces of Hubei, Guangdong, Anhui and Jiangsu.
The pesticide was banned in Hainan in 2004 but can still be found in remote parts of the island, China Daily reported. Some farmers still use it because it is much cheaper than legal pesticides. Though Hainan is well known among Chinese for its sweeping beaches and five-star resorts, it also has a mountainous interior with rich farmland, much of it on terraced hillsides.
The outrage over the Hainan cowpeas, the latest in a series of Chinese food safety scandals in recent years, erupted on Feb. 21, when the agriculture bureau of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, announced that it had destroyed 3.5 tons of toxic cowpeas from Hainan. An urgent nationwide warning was issued by the central government’s Ministry of Agriculture, and within days, cowpeas tainted with the banned pesticide were discovered in the three other provinces.
Officials here in Sanya have criticized the Wuhan officials for breaking an “unspoken rule” that officials in different cities and provinces report problems to one another rather than telling the public, China Daily reported.
The release of the information by Wuhan officials “did not save face for Sanya, nor did it save face for the Ministry of Agriculture,” Zhou Qingchong, an official in the Sanya agriculture bureau, told China National Radio, an official news organization, according to the China Daily report.
Mr. Zhou said Wuhan officials could have told Sanya officials about the cowpeas privately, and Sanya would have sent out investigators.
“Wuhan is really not enough of a friend,” he said.
Many provinces in China banned sales of Hainan cowpeas after the first tainted batches were discovered. In the area of Dongguan, in Guangdong Province, the authorities destroyed 7.5 tons of cowpeas on Sunday. The price of the crop has plummeted.
Because of its tropical climate, Hainan grows and exports vegetables that cannot be grown elsewhere in China during the winter. But officials in Sanya, the island’s main beach resort area, recently decided to adopt policies to push tourism ahead of agriculture, said Du Liyin, director of the Sanya Tourism Development Commission, in an interview on Tuesday.
Yet, Ms. Du said, “we don’t plan to be 100 percent reliant on the tourism industry.”
In 2008, a widespread food scare gripped China when news organizations reported that dairy products from nearly two dozen manufacturers were tainted with melamine, a toxic industrial chemical. At least six children died and 300,000 people fell ill from the products, the government said. Senior Chinese officials eventually ordered news organizations to stop reporting on the scandal, fearing that the news highlighted endemic corruption within various levels of the government. Some parents are still trying to sue for compensation.

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