Organic farming sprouts in Beijing
Posted: Monday, August 10, 2009 12:52 PM
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Beijing, China
By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
BEIJING – A debate over whether eating organic foods provides any nutritional benefit was sparked late last month after an independent study in the U.K. found that there were no significant nutritional differences between organic and conventionally produced food.
But, in China, a growing appreciation for organic food isn’t simply because of the perceived nutritional benefits; consumers have turned to organic food as a means of ensuring some measure of health and safety.
After all, this is a country where the challenges of maintaining food safety are regularly in the newspaper headlines – the melamine milk scandal in 2008; tainted cough syrup that killed more than 100 people in Panama in 2006; and pet food containing adulterated wheat gluten, which was blamed for thousands of animal deaths in the U.S. in 2007. Not to mention the myriad reports of food being tampered in local Chinese markets.
This year the Chinese government has taken numerous steps in an attempt to improve food safety. Chief among these is the country’s first food safety law, which went into effect on June 1, enacting tough penalties against producers of tainted food and consolidating oversight in one cabinet-level agency. And more recently, officials established a database keeping track of food manufacturers who have issued recalls in the past.
Still, consumers in Beijing are taking matters into their own hands. In fact, just as it has in the U.S. and other western countries, community supported agriculture – buying locally grown produce directly from farmers – has begun to grow in popularity in the capital.
A Taiwan-born New Yorker, Lejen Chen, explains to NBC News why she set up the Green Cow Organic Farm, a little oasis on the outskirts of Beijing.
