Guangdong pledges action on food after tests find problems

It's not just Guangdong's freshwater fish farms that have problems. Tests on products from the province have revealed many contain excessive additives, carry misleading labels or fail to meet quality standards. Authorities pledged yesterday to tackle the food quality problem.

About 70 per cent of milk products and 60 per cent of drinks produced in Guangdong were below standard, inspectors from the Guangdong Administration of Quality and Technology Supervision found. The milk products had low protein content and excessive additives, while beverages used too much food colouring.

One of the products tested, Kangyi Orange Juice, from Nanhai , was found to contain no fruit juice at all - being nothing but food colouring mixed with water.

The administration said about half of all dried seafood tested failed quality tests because the samples contained too many additives. Although the situation had improved from last year, pesticides were still being applied to salted fish to deter flies and prevent spoilage.

About half of the distilled wines on the administration's list also failed to meet standards, with the actual alcohol content in some varieties less than indicated on the label.

Nearly all of the problematic foodstuffs were produced by little-known small and medium-sized businesses.

The quality administration's vice-director, Ren Xiaotie , said that even though the products were substandard, it did not mean they were unsafe.