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Food safety line takes 84,000 calls
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THE Shanghai Food and Drug Administration received more than 84,000 calls to its 12331 hotline last year.
The number of calls from whistleblowers in the period almost doubled to 531, it said yesterday.
More than 28 percent of the people providing tip-offs did not leave any contact details, which means the authority will have difficulty paying them their due rewards.
The food authority introduced a payment system for people who blow the whistle on dubious practices related to food and drug safety in 2007. Since 2011, the maximum possible reward has been 200,000 yuan (US$32,000).
Though “anonymity is guaranteed,” many people prefer not to leave their details for fear of retribution, an official said.
About 60 percent of the calls last year related to food safety issues, of which 66 percent proved accurate, officials said.
In one case, people living in an apartment building in the Pudong New Area called the hotline to say they believed an illegal meat processing business was being operated from inside the property.
Their fears were confirmed when officials visited the premises and discovered 1.1 tons of meat and various pieces of processing equipment.
When the meat was tracked to local markets, several samples were found to be tainted with Rhodamine B, a chemical and possible carcinogen that is banned in food production.
The case is still under investigation by Pudong police.
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