Better safe than sorry
The Chinese press has dubbed health chief York Chow Yat-ngok 'Dr a-blunder-a-week' - making a pun on his Cantonese name, which loosely means 'to carry the can'. The latest gaffe by the secretary for health, welfare and food concerns mainland eels and freshwater fish contaminated with the cancer-causing agent malachite green.
Dr Chow warned citizens to refrain from eating eels after the mainland suspended its exports to Japan and the European Union. Mainland officials did not inform their counterparts in Hong Kong before the product recalls. However, Dr Chow soon announced there was no legal basis for Hong Kong to ban the import of eels containing the carcinogen as it was not on the list of prohibited toxic substances. As a result, poisonous eels continued to be available in the markets.
Government laboratories confirmed that the malachite was also present in samples of big head fish, grass carp, edible goldfish, freshwater grouper and common carp. Yet Dr Chow informed the public only 30 hours later. The delay was apparently meant to give mainland authorities ample time to voluntarily stop selling the fish to Hong Kong.
Our administration has assumed only a passive role in defending public health in this case. Officials seemed more concerned with mainland officials' interests than the physical well-being of locals.
There is no sign of the crisis abating. Sea fish for export in Leizhou , Guangdong province, have reportedly died in droves because of chemical contamination. This is bound to make Hongkongers even more suspicious of mainland food.
Mainland authorities have repeatedly been late in notifying Hong Kong of such problems. Instead of tackling the issue, Li Changjiang , minister of the State General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, blamed fish smugglers. In a meeting in Beijing on Tuesday, both sides agreed to set up a fish-farm accreditation system to ensure the quality of supplies to Hong Kong. Inspectors from Hong Kong will also be allowed to inspect mainland fish farms. But we cannot rely on these measures to solve the problem.
Many mainland food-production businesses are private enterprises; only the sale of the products is still primarily in the hands of the authorities. There is no financial incentive for those authorities to ensure that the production processes are up to standard. Even if Beijing is eager to apply more pressure, the local administrations have few reasons to be more responsible in reporting irregularities.
Rather than rely on mainland co-operation, it would be far more effective for Hong Kong to defend its own rights as one of the biggest consumer markets for mainland food products. The incident has already dealt a heavy blow to the local seafood retail business.
Owners of local fish farms and wholesalers have demanded that a double inspection and quarantine procedure be established on both sides. That makes much better sense for Hong Kong. After all, more stringent inspections of mainland food imports are the last defence measures within our own control.
Meanwhile, those who are supposed to remind policymakers of their inadequacies have themselves become complacent. In a radio interview on Commercial Radio 1, Lau Siu-kai, who heads the Central Policy Unit, admonished Hong Kong people for being hard to please. He said the public demand for political leaders to be nearly perfect was unreasonably high.
As a sociologist, Professor Lau should have known better. A healthy meal is the most fundamental of all public demands. If the government cannot even deliver that, people cannot be blamed for nitpicking.
Albert Cheng King-hon is a directly elected legislator
