Chinese authorities have caught vegetable processors coating stem lettuce with dye to make it look fresher, adding to concerns over food safety in the country after a scandal over cabbage treated with a carcinogen. The businesses used a food additive permitted in beverages on fresh vegetables, and local authorities destroyed all 11.8 tons of the affected lettuce.
According to China's CCTV and other local media on the 7th, a video recently surfaced showing stem lettuce being dyed at a vegetable processing facility in Yuzhong County, Gansu Province.
Stem lettuce is known in South Korea mainly as gungchae. In the video, workers dip stem lettuce into a plastic tub filled with green liquid and pull it back out. The liquid in the tub was a vivid green, visible to the naked eye.
The netizen who released the video is known as a creator who films content on food and health in China. He said he visited 13 vegetable processing facilities in the Yuzhong County area and found that more than half were soaking stem lettuce in liquid in a similar manner.
He said tests on the solution detected blue and yellow food coloring, and he called on authorities to investigate.
As the video spread and the controversy grew, local authorities launched an investigation. They conducted joint inspections of 53 vegetable storage and distribution businesses in Yuzhong County.
Six of them were confirmed to have used dye on stem lettuce. The investigation found the businesses applied the coloring while sorting and washing the lettuce to improve its appearance.
The dye in question is a food additive permitted for use in some foods, including beverages. Its use on fresh vegetables, however, is not allowed.
Authorities seized 11.8 tons of the affected stem lettuce on site and destroyed all of it. They also opened cases against the six businesses and plan to expand inspections to the cultivation, transport and sale of farm produce across Yuzhong County.
Whether any of the seized stem lettuce was exported to South Korea has not been confirmed. With Chinese-grown gungchae circulating in the South Korean market, concerns among consumers over the safety of Chinese farm produce appear inevitable.
From Cabbage and Pickled Vegetables to Lettuce: A String of Food Safety Scandals in China
China has seen a series of controversies over farm produce and food hygiene in recent months.
In August, reports that some rural areas in China were using formaldehyde to keep cabbage fresh sparked an outcry. Formaldehyde is a colorless chemical with a strong, irritating odor; its aqueous solution is commonly called formalin. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, classifies formaldehyde as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning there is sufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans.
South Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety inspected Chinese cabbage imports at the time and said it confirmed that the cabbage treated with formaldehyde had not been exported to the country.
Last October, a video from a pickled cabbage plant in Huludao, Liaoning Province, showed a worker smoking while salting cabbage and spitting on the vegetables, drawing wide condemnation in China.
