“In China, don’t eat or drink.” Some travel agents probably issue this warning to anyone entering the world’s most populous nation.

Feeding China’s 1.3 billion people always looms as a tough task, a huge priority. So imagine the concern and discontent as a lot looks hazardous to consume.

At least six infants died and hundreds of thousands fell ill with kidney damage due to melamine, an industrial chemical used to make plastics, tainting baby-milk formula. Initially, officials blamed farmers and milk merchants for adding the melamine to create an impression of high protein content.

Then more testing showed the same contaminant in other dairy products, chickens, eggs, baked items, livestock feed and elsewhere. Rather than one company at fault, dozens are implicated, their products suspect. Public confidence in China’s food supply dived. Some nations stopped importing entire categories of China-made edibles. The World Health Organization called the problems “a large-scale intentional activity to deceive consumers for simple, basic, short-term profits”.

Eventually, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao apologized, admitting the government deserved partial blame. Solemnly, he pledged to restore confidence in food safety “within two years”. So maybe everyone relaxed because the only precaution needed is to delay eating until late 2010. That solves the problem, and with typical Beijing efficiency too!

The Chinese-food scandal brings to mind a joke submitted by Kolawole Abdul, a correspondent in Nigeria:

Condemned to death, a murderer must choose to enter one of three rooms. The first is full of raging fire. The second has assassins with loaded guns. The third contains lions that haven’t eaten for two years. Which room is safest?

Answer: The third room makes a wise choice because lions without food for two years already are dead.

With China’s food safety in doubt, its people may develop a mighty immunity to the obesity problems prevailing in the West. Fresh milk, anyone?

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