In China, what you eat tells who you are.# Returnee - 海归
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September 16, 2011|By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Beijing — At a glance, it is clear this is no run-of-the-
mill farm: A 6-foot spiked fence hems the meticulously planted vegetables
and security guards control a cantilevered gate that glides open only to
select cars.
"It is for officials only. They produce organic vegetables, peppers, onions,
beans, cauliflowers, but they don't sell to the public," said Li Xiuqin, 68
, a lifelong Shunyi village resident who lives directly across the street
from the farm but has never been inside. "Ordinary people can't go in there."
Until May, a sign inside the gate identified the property as the Beijing
Customs Administration Vegetable Base and Country Club. The placard was
removed after a Chinese reporter sneaked inside and published a story about
the farm producing organic food so clean the cucumbers could be eaten
directly from the vine.
Elsewhere in the world, this might be something to boast about. Not in China
. Organic gardening here is a hush-hush affair in which the cleanest, safest
products are largely channeled to the rich and politically connected.
Many of the nation's best food companies don't promote or advertise. They
don't want the public to know that their limited supply is sent to Communist
Party officials, dining halls reserved for top athletes, foreign diplomats,
and others in the elite classes. The general public, meanwhile, dines on
foods that are increasingly tainted or less than healthful — meats laced
with steroids, fish from ponds spiked with hormones to increase growth, milk
containing dangerous additives such as melamine, which allows watered-down
milk to pass protein-content tests.
"The officials don't really care what the common people eat because they and
their family are getting a special supply of food," said Gao Zhiyong, who
worked for a state-run food company and wrote a book on the subject.
In China, the tegong, or special supply, is a holdover from the early years
of Communist rule, when danwei, work units of state-owned enterprises,
raised their own food and allocated it based on rank. "The leaders wanted to
make sure they had enough to eat and that nobody poisoned their food," said
Gao.
In the 1950s, Soviet advisors helped the Chinese set up a food procurement
department under the security apparatus to supply and inspect food for the
leadership, according to a biography of Mao Tse-tung written by his personal
physician. Lower levels of officialdom were divided into 25 gradations of
rank that determined the quantity and quality of rations.
In modern-day China, it is the degradation of the environment and a limited
supply of healthful food that is fueling the parallel food system for the
elite.
"We flash forward 50 years and we see the only elements of China society
getting food that is reliable, safe and free of contaminants are those
cadres who have access to the special food supply," said Phelim Kine of the
Hong Kong office of Human Rights Watch.
In the capital, special supply farms are located near the airport, home to
wealthier expatriates and many international schools, and to the northwest,
beyond the miasma of pollution emanating from the overcrowded, traffic-
choked central city.
In the western foothills, the exclusive Jushan farm first developed to
supply Mao's private kitchen still operates under the auspices of the state-
run Capital Agribusiness Group, providing food for national meetings. A
state-owned company, the Beijing 2nd Commercial Bureau, says on its website
that it "supplies national banquets and meetings, which have become the
cradle of safe food in Beijing."
The State Council, China's highest administrative body, has its own supplier
of delicacies, down to salted duck eggs.
"We have supplied them for almost 20 years," said a spokesman at the offices
of Weishanhu Lotus Foods, in Shandong province. "Our product cannot be
bought in an ordinary supermarket as our volume of production is very little
."
Organic farmers say they face pressure to sell their limited output to
official channels.
"The local government would like us to give more products to officials and
work units, but we think it is important that individuals can enjoy our
product," said Wang Zhanli, whose organic dairy in Yanqing, just beyond the
most frequented tourist sections of the Great Wall, received certification
in 2006.
At his Green Yard dairy, the technology is imported from Holland. The cows
graze on grass free of pesticides and are milked in a sterile barn by women
in white caps who look more like laboratory aides than milkmaids.
On their organic diet, the cows produce about half the volume of
conventional dairy cows, meaning that the supply is never enough, especially
since the 2008 scandal in which tainted milk left six Chinese babies dead
and sickened 300,000 people. Managers at the dairy say about two-thirds of
their product goes to officials, state-owned enterprises, embassies and
international schools. A limited quantity is sold at diplomatic compunds and
a few select health food stores at prices nearly triple that for regular
milk.
"We're not Switzerland. Our population is way too big for everybody to eat
organic food," said Hou Xuejun, general manager of the Green Yard dairy.
The continued existence of the tegong, or special supply, is treated with
secrecy because of public resentment over the privileges of the elite. After
the Southern Weekly, a hard-hitting Guangzhou-based newspaper, published
the story about the customs farm, the Central Propaganda Department banned
further reporting on the subject and the article was removed from the
newspaper's website.
The customs department said it did not own the farm but had signed a 10-year
lease to buy vegetables.
"Because of this deal we were able to have a stable supply of vegetables for
the past years and we can pay for these items at much lower costs even when
the price of food is rising so much nowadays," customs spokeswoman Feng
Lijing said.
The last year has seen dozens of stomach-churning scandals about tainted
food. Last month, 11 people in western China died after consuming vinegar
contaminated with antifreeze. Each new scandal redoubles the demand for safe
food.
Although organic produce stores are cropping up in Shanghai and Beijing,
prices are high. Desperate for clean food at affordable prices, some Chinese
families have formed cooperatives to buy directly from farmers — their own
version of special supply.
"There is not enough supply of organic food, there aren't so many farmers
who really know how to produce organically, and if you found a farm, it is
too expensive for ordinary people," said Liu Yujing, a Beijing homemaker who
founded a 100-family cooperative last year.
The mother of a 4-year-old girl, Liu was motivated by the revelations of
melamine-tainted milk. "I know you can buy some organic food in shops, but I
don't trust that either. We've heard a lot of them are fake."
China's sports teams have enacted strict bans on athletes eating pork
because of the fear that clenbuterol, a common but illegal steroid fed to
pigs, can cause false positives on drug tests. Female judo champion Tong Wen
was banned from competing internationally last year after a test showed
traces of the drug, but the ban by the International Judo Federation was
overturned in February after she said she had never knowingly ingested
clenbuterol.
"Now we have a special team that takes care of procuring food. We are more
cautious than ever before. We buy pork only from organic farms through a
channel that the government has approved," said judo coach Wu Weifeng.
Much of the pork for the elite is procured through the 2nd Commercial Bureau
, which has a subsidiary that slaughters 50,000 pigs a year at a farm in
Sanhe, Hebei province, according to Caixin, a business magazine.
The magazine said most of the pork went to the special supply and quoted a
manager as saying, "Sometimes raising pigs is about politics too."
b************[email protected]
Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
Reporting from Beijing — At a glance, it is clear this is no run-of-the-
mill farm: A 6-foot spiked fence hems the meticulously planted vegetables
and security guards control a cantilevered gate that glides open only to
select cars.
"It is for officials only. They produce organic vegetables, peppers, onions,
beans, cauliflowers, but they don't sell to the public," said Li Xiuqin, 68
, a lifelong Shunyi village resident who lives directly across the street
from the farm but has never been inside. "Ordinary people can't go in there."
Until May, a sign inside the gate identified the property as the Beijing
Customs Administration Vegetable Base and Country Club. The placard was
removed after a Chinese reporter sneaked inside and published a story about
the farm producing organic food so clean the cucumbers could be eaten
directly from the vine.
Elsewhere in the world, this might be something to boast about. Not in China
. Organic gardening here is a hush-hush affair in which the cleanest, safest
products are largely channeled to the rich and politically connected.
Many of the nation's best food companies don't promote or advertise. They
don't want the public to know that their limited supply is sent to Communist
Party officials, dining halls reserved for top athletes, foreign diplomats,
and others in the elite classes. The general public, meanwhile, dines on
foods that are increasingly tainted or less than healthful — meats laced
with steroids, fish from ponds spiked with hormones to increase growth, milk
containing dangerous additives such as melamine, which allows watered-down
milk to pass protein-content tests.
"The officials don't really care what the common people eat because they and
their family are getting a special supply of food," said Gao Zhiyong, who
worked for a state-run food company and wrote a book on the subject.
In China, the tegong, or special supply, is a holdover from the early years
of Communist rule, when danwei, work units of state-owned enterprises,
raised their own food and allocated it based on rank. "The leaders wanted to
make sure they had enough to eat and that nobody poisoned their food," said
Gao.
In the 1950s, Soviet advisors helped the Chinese set up a food procurement
department under the security apparatus to supply and inspect food for the
leadership, according to a biography of Mao Tse-tung written by his personal
physician. Lower levels of officialdom were divided into 25 gradations of
rank that determined the quantity and quality of rations.
In modern-day China, it is the degradation of the environment and a limited
supply of healthful food that is fueling the parallel food system for the
elite.
"We flash forward 50 years and we see the only elements of China society
getting food that is reliable, safe and free of contaminants are those
cadres who have access to the special food supply," said Phelim Kine of the
Hong Kong office of Human Rights Watch.
In the capital, special supply farms are located near the airport, home to
wealthier expatriates and many international schools, and to the northwest,
beyond the miasma of pollution emanating from the overcrowded, traffic-
choked central city.
In the western foothills, the exclusive Jushan farm first developed to
supply Mao's private kitchen still operates under the auspices of the state-
run Capital Agribusiness Group, providing food for national meetings. A
state-owned company, the Beijing 2nd Commercial Bureau, says on its website
that it "supplies national banquets and meetings, which have become the
cradle of safe food in Beijing."
The State Council, China's highest administrative body, has its own supplier
of delicacies, down to salted duck eggs.
"We have supplied them for almost 20 years," said a spokesman at the offices
of Weishanhu Lotus Foods, in Shandong province. "Our product cannot be
bought in an ordinary supermarket as our volume of production is very little
."
Organic farmers say they face pressure to sell their limited output to
official channels.
"The local government would like us to give more products to officials and
work units, but we think it is important that individuals can enjoy our
product," said Wang Zhanli, whose organic dairy in Yanqing, just beyond the
most frequented tourist sections of the Great Wall, received certification
in 2006.
At his Green Yard dairy, the technology is imported from Holland. The cows
graze on grass free of pesticides and are milked in a sterile barn by women
in white caps who look more like laboratory aides than milkmaids.
On their organic diet, the cows produce about half the volume of
conventional dairy cows, meaning that the supply is never enough, especially
since the 2008 scandal in which tainted milk left six Chinese babies dead
and sickened 300,000 people. Managers at the dairy say about two-thirds of
their product goes to officials, state-owned enterprises, embassies and
international schools. A limited quantity is sold at diplomatic compunds and
a few select health food stores at prices nearly triple that for regular
milk.
"We're not Switzerland. Our population is way too big for everybody to eat
organic food," said Hou Xuejun, general manager of the Green Yard dairy.
The continued existence of the tegong, or special supply, is treated with
secrecy because of public resentment over the privileges of the elite. After
the Southern Weekly, a hard-hitting Guangzhou-based newspaper, published
the story about the customs farm, the Central Propaganda Department banned
further reporting on the subject and the article was removed from the
newspaper's website.
The customs department said it did not own the farm but had signed a 10-year
lease to buy vegetables.
"Because of this deal we were able to have a stable supply of vegetables for
the past years and we can pay for these items at much lower costs even when
the price of food is rising so much nowadays," customs spokeswoman Feng
Lijing said.
The last year has seen dozens of stomach-churning scandals about tainted
food. Last month, 11 people in western China died after consuming vinegar
contaminated with antifreeze. Each new scandal redoubles the demand for safe
food.
Although organic produce stores are cropping up in Shanghai and Beijing,
prices are high. Desperate for clean food at affordable prices, some Chinese
families have formed cooperatives to buy directly from farmers — their own
version of special supply.
"There is not enough supply of organic food, there aren't so many farmers
who really know how to produce organically, and if you found a farm, it is
too expensive for ordinary people," said Liu Yujing, a Beijing homemaker who
founded a 100-family cooperative last year.
The mother of a 4-year-old girl, Liu was motivated by the revelations of
melamine-tainted milk. "I know you can buy some organic food in shops, but I
don't trust that either. We've heard a lot of them are fake."
China's sports teams have enacted strict bans on athletes eating pork
because of the fear that clenbuterol, a common but illegal steroid fed to
pigs, can cause false positives on drug tests. Female judo champion Tong Wen
was banned from competing internationally last year after a test showed
traces of the drug, but the ban by the International Judo Federation was
overturned in February after she said she had never knowingly ingested
clenbuterol.
"Now we have a special team that takes care of procuring food. We are more
cautious than ever before. We buy pork only from organic farms through a
channel that the government has approved," said judo coach Wu Weifeng.
Much of the pork for the elite is procured through the 2nd Commercial Bureau
, which has a subsidiary that slaughters 50,000 pigs a year at a farm in
Sanhe, Hebei province, according to Caixin, a business magazine.
The magazine said most of the pork went to the special supply and quoted a
manager as saying, "Sometimes raising pigs is about politics too."
b************[email protected]
Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
