[Editorial] Imported Chinese foods need attention

Lead-contaminated blue crabs, lead-inserted blowfish and tarred sesame seeds.

Chinese food is jeopardizing the people`s health greatly. The controversy over lead-bearing blue crabs and blowfish imported from China still is festering. Shocking the nation is the reports that tar, a poisonous chemical, was found in imported sesame from China, being sold in the domestic market.

As the imported sesame is on sale at prices over one-tenth lower than domestic products, the imported sesame rapidly has made its way toward the dining tables of domestic consumers. This is a grave matter that such venomous foods are circulating in the country.

At this critical juncture, it seems that the government is too lax and lukewarm in coping with the situation. This might be due to the government`s bitter experience when the nation capitulated under the pressure of the Chinese government with the threat of leveling high tariffs against Korean goods in retaliation for Seoul`s imposition of customs duties on imported Chinese garlic.

The question of the lead in crab is clearly different in nature from the garlic issue in the past. Under the sanitary provisions of the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the pertinent state is authorized to take embargo sanction on the imported goods if they are found to be harmful as a result of scientific examinations, in order to protect man`s health, as well as animals and plants. Under these provisions, the government banned imports of the green grapes contaminated by poisonous agricultural chemicals and pigs stricken with hoof and foot disease.

Maritime-fisheries officials at the Korean Embassy to Beijing are conducting on-the-spot investigations into the case, but they have yet to determine the process of how the lead was inserted in the seafood. The lead is found to be not contained in all Chinese fisheries products but only in some of them.

Therefore, the Seoul government might ask Beijing to tighten its inspection of agro-fisheries products on the basis of the results of the ongoing field inspections, before taking any concrete actions. It is plausible that Korea permit the imports of Chinese products only authorized in advance by the related Chinese authorities by concluding a pact to this effect. In the case of Japan, Korea, whose international safety rating of the agro-fisheries products is higher than that of China, is shipping goods to Japan after undergoing the inspection process.

If Beijing fails to take the proper measures in disregard for the Seoul proposition and if lead is found in its exported foods continuously, Seoul has no choice but to ban them in accordance with the WTO provisions.

As for the tarred sesame seeds, the government can take unilateral actions in this regard, as the Chinese products have been introduced to the nation by Chinese peddlers who carried them under the regulation that the goods weigh 50 kilograms or less are permitted for entry without duties. The sesame is known to be bought by Korean merchants and circulated in the domestic markets.

In the first place, the Korean middlemen should be checked to prevent them from committing illegal transactions. And then steps must be taken to control the introduction of the adulterated food by the Chinese peddlers, such as lowering the ceiling of the permissible volume of the agro-products than the present 50 kilograms.

As the saying goes, penny wise and pound foolish, many cheap Chinese products are bogus and spoiled with harmful materials. This gives the lesson to the consumers that they must choose safe foods even if their prices are somewhat expensive, after carefully looking into the exported country of origin.