Xiamen to inspect cooking oil & dinnerware to make sure food safety
By admin on 2014-12-30

The Xiamen Health Bureau plans to carry out a one-month inspection on cooking oil and tableware as reports said up to one-tenth of cooking oil used in China could be made from recycled waste oil and half of takeaway boxes contain chemicals that could cause cancer.

Restaurants and eateries in Xiamen will be urged to show account for the use of cooking oil. It is reported that the provider of recycled cooking oil should be fined 30,000 to 100,000 yuan. The Xiamen Health Bureau will also detect the germ and sulfur dioxide concentrations on the tableware.

It is reported that China consumes about 22.5 million tons of cooking oil annually, which means that one in 10 meals in the country may be cooked with illegal cooking oil. The use of recycled cooking oil will put the public's health in peril because it may contain heavy metal, waste antibiotics or aflatoxins, a highly toxic substance that could cause cancer.

Food safety is once again being put into the limelight following media reports last week that a "significant portion" of used cooking oil is being recycled and returned to people's dining tables across China.

Catering industry insiders and food safety experts say huge profits, inadequate supervision and the difficulty of disposing of used cooking oil are the main reasons that used oil is collected from kitchen waste and reused as cooking oil.