Can you spot the counterfeit groceries? probably not

I have often thought about buying a pallet of plain water bottles filling them with tap water and applying an EVIAN label to it then reselling it to the shadey bodega up the street at cut rate prices. The chinese keep beating me to the punch on all of my scheming schemes. Humans when faced with either being broke or having money typically go with having money... if that means counterfeiting purses or boxes of kraft mac and cheese then so be it.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/world/asia/27cnd-China.html?ex=1340596800&en=634c2bccc2bebeef&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Still, the government has moved aggressively in recent months to enforce the nation’s food safety regulations and to crack down on fake and counterfeit foods.

But Tuesday’s announcement, which appeared on the web site of the country’s top quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, has added fuel to concerns about rampant fraud in the food industry here.

Regulators said 33,000 law enforcement officials combed the nation and turned up illegal food making dens, counterfeit bottled water, fake soy sauce, banned food additives and illegal meat processing plants.

“These are not isolated cases,” Han Yi, director of the administration’s quality control and inspection department told the state-run media.

China Daily, the nation’s English language newspaper, said industrial chemicals, including dyes, mineral oils, paraffin wax, formaldehyde and malachite green, had been found in everything from candy, pickles and biscuits to seafood.

Regulators said they also learned that sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid were being used to process shark fin and ox tendon.

These industrial chemicals are often toxic or corrosive and can be used in everything from drain cleaners, detergent and fertilizer to surfboard wax.