Chapter 5 Chapter 04 Why our food is so unsafe

Recently, a report about "You must have eaten gutter oil" has attracted national attention. Professor He Dongping of Wuhan Institute of Technology and his "Urban Food Waste Processing and Application" research group have been secretly investigating gutter oil for a long time. Six years later, it finally surfaced.The investigation was shocking!Professional gutter oil recyclers filter, heat, precipitate, and separate gutter oil overnight to turn it into clear "edible oil", sell it at a low price, and return it to the dining table.Comprehensive statistical results show that the total annual profit of waste oil in China reaches 1.5 billion to 2 billion yuan. On March 18, 2010, the State Food and Drug Administration issued the "Urgent Notice on Strictly Preventing "Gutter Oil" from Flowing into Catering Services", requiring all localities to quickly carry out inspections.However, in order to completely cut off the filthy industrial chain of waste oil, we still have a long way to go in terms of supervision, concept and technology.

Recently, the knowledge on the dining table has become more and more inscrutable, making it difficult for people to figure out.Take edible oil as an example, not only the genetically modified issue I talked about in the conference, but also the issue of waste oil.I have to admire, this gutter oil really shows us what a circular economy is, and what it means to turn waste into wealth.And I myself am the biggest victim of this so-called circular economy, because I eat out a lot.Now I am really talking about eating, and when I saw fried dough sticks on the roadside, and the price was so cheap, I intuitively thought of waste oil.In addition, there are my favorite foods, such as boiled fish, Sichuan style hot pot, Maoxuewang and so on. I am also worried that they are all made of waste oil!Otherwise, if you put such a large pot of oil in the boiled fish, if it is not waste oil, how can the price be announced so easily?Restaurants are not in the business of losing money.

I need to clarify first, what exactly is waste oil?According to the superficial understanding, it should refer to the oil pulled out from the ditch and the sewer.But this is only the most straightforward concept, the most obvious and the best understood.More precisely, it is actually a comprehensive concept.The first type is what we usually call hogwash oil; the second type is animal oil processed and extracted from animal viscera; and the third type is oil that has been used more than often.In fact, to put it bluntly, it is equivalent to saying that all inferior and problematic oils are called waste oil.According to our data, we consume about 22 million tons of oil every year, from which about 3.3 million tons of waste oil can be produced, and 2.7 million tons of waste oil can be extracted from these waste oil to return to the market.According to this ratio, about 1/10 of the food we eat is made of waste oil. Of course, this is the highest ratio, and the real ratio should be much lower.It's really sad to think about it, gutter oil, something even pigs don't eat, is now being eaten by us!

Moreover, the hazards of waste oil are subtle. My assistant once asked several doctors in the emergency department if they had ever admitted patients who developed symptoms due to consumption of waste oil?They say they haven't so far, but they say that the waste oil contains a carcinogen called aflatoxin, which is more than 100 times more toxic than arsenic! I saw that there are several opinions on the identification of gutter oil on the Internet, and one of them is particularly interesting. It says that in order to distinguish gutter oil, you must look, smell, taste, listen, and ask five times.You see, look, hear, ask, and even use the methods of traditional Chinese medicine to see a doctor!But in fact, even so, it is still difficult to tell, why do you say that?Let me explain to you one by one.

The first is to look.If the hawker brought black oil, would you eat it?You definitely won't eat it.But what if the oil you see is transparent?You should know that in the process of refining waste oil, those unscrupulous operators will use chemical raw materials to fade the color of dirty oil. The waste oil you see is very clear and bright, and you can't tell it from the color at all. The second is to smell.If you smell the waste oil, you will find that the oil smells pretty good.How is this going?This is because after these unscrupulous operators use caustic soda to deodorize, they add some peanut essence and the like to it, so that the waste oil produced in this way will emit a strong fragrance.You were not very hungry at first, but after smelling the smell of gutter oil, it made you feel hungry.

The third is to taste.Try to see if there is any smell, peculiar smell, etc. I guess I can't taste it. Anyway, when I didn't know the situation in the past, I probably ate a lot of waste oil, and I didn't feel anything abnormal. The fourth is to listen.This may not be aimed at restaurants. Who would use a chopstick to dip some oil when eating, and then burn the oil on paper?I guess no one in the whole country has ever done this.This may be mainly for those who bought oil in the mall and wanted to see if it was inferior oil at home. Just take two drops of oil and burn it on the paper. If it clicks, then you may have bought inferior oil. product.Because when oil and water are mixed together, when heated to a certain degree, it will make a creaking sound.

The fifth is to ask.It seems that when we go to eat in a restaurant, we should first go to the kitchen and ask the people in the kitchen if they use waste oil for cooking.How do you think they will answer?They will definitely say "of course not". Therefore, if you use this traditional Chinese medicine to distinguish gutter oil, it will only be a waste of work in the end. Many readers will wonder, where does so much waste oil come from?Let me tell you, behind the waste oil, there is a very complete and efficient industrial chain, and it is also a complete circular economy, because it has truly returned from the dining table to the dining table.In fact, this problem exists not only in the Pearl River Delta region, but also in the whole country. It is a national industrial chain.It was first spread from Wuhan, and then arrived in various cities in the Pearl River Delta.I believe that if you go to the whole country to check, it is estimated that every city has it. During the investigation, we found that there are three main flow directions of waste oil.The first flow direction is the waste oil from high-end restaurants, which is collected and transported by collectors, and finally arrives at chemical plants, where it is refined into biofuels for industrial production.In the second flow direction, those who raise livestock use swill oil and swill oil to feed pigs, sheep, and ducks.Maybe this problem is not too big. After all, the toxicity is filtered through the bodies of animals such as pigs and ducks. The toxicity of waste oil remains, but it is estimated that not too much is absorbed by the human body, and the harm is not that great.And the third flow direction is what we are most worried about, and it is also very scary.The gutter oil comes out of the restaurant, is processed by those unscrupulous operators, and then sold back, and finally returns to the dining table for us to eat.

Having said that, I would like to ask everyone, do you know how gutter oil is extracted?In fact, it is very simple, just set up a pot and a stove, and first separate the water and oil.This is actually a very simple process, because the water evaporates as soon as it is heated. The key is how to separate the oil from the impurities in it.How to divide?At this time, these refiners will add some things that we don't want to see to the separated oil, such as decolorizing agent and essence.Now some people sell decolorizers online, and the cheapest time is only 1 yuan per kilogram.How much decolorizer is needed to extract 1 ton of waste oil?I roughly calculated that it was 25 kilograms. If it is calculated at 1 yuan and 50 cents per kilogram, it is basically sold at this price, which is 30 to 40 yuan.Everyone should be aware of the dangers of flavors, and those who engage in refining are also aware of them. However, even so, they are still blinded by profit and pursue such interests, which eventually brought waste oil back to our table.

I often call on our companies in the media to engage in industrial chain integration.That is to say, enterprises need to string together the entire chain from product design, raw material procurement, production and processing, warehousing and transportation, order processing, to wholesale and retail.This can improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits.I now find that the industrial chain integration I want to promote is not very well promoted in our real enterprises, but waste oil is quite well done.Let's see how compact the waste oil industry chain is.Let's take the product design as an example first. These unscrupulous operators have such a level that they can "design" gutter oil into our cooking oil, which not only looks good in color, but also tastes good.This level of research and development is really extraordinary.What about raw material procurement?Then needless to say, the hogwash directly taken from the restaurant is the main raw material for their extraction of gutter oil.Moreover, the procurement of this kind of raw material is monopolized, and other people cannot enter. If they enter, they will beat you, and there are gangsters involved, so for those who are engaged in waste oil activities, the procurement of raw materials is very secure. , and the efficiency is particularly high.Besides, the production and processing of waste oil is more efficient than you and I can imagine.They turned waste oil into cooking oil in one night.There is also order processing, that is, selling directly back to these restaurants that sell hogwash.Of course, there are also wholesale and retail, which refers to the link of selling directly to our consumers.Look at our gutter oil industry in China, which can be regarded as the most thoroughly integrated and efficient industrial chain in the world.

So, what factors have created such a perfect industrial chain of waste oil?It is high profit!Do you know how much profit the waste oil industry can make in a year?Let me tell you, its annual total profit can reach 1.5 billion to 2 billion yuan. What kind of concept is this?That is to say, if we add up the profits of the manufacturing industry in Guangdong Province, it is still far behind the profits of the waste oil industry.Can you imagine it?Some occupations can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month from digging waste oil, which is equivalent to the income of senior white-collar workers.If a restaurant gives the right to extract waste oil to a certain professional waste oil digger, it can also get 2 million yuan.Many of our ordinary people will not earn 2 million yuan in their lifetime.I know that there is a gutter oil insider who is in the farming business. He said that he usually goes to restaurants to collect hogwash oil and pays 100 yuan per ton.Its scale is not particularly large. Usually, a big pot is set up in a place like a small forest in the urban-rural fringe. For example, there are many such big pots near pig farms.After he collected the gutter oil, he mainly used it to raise pigs. He first heated these things in a large pot, and then fed them to pigs or ducks.The remaining oil, that is, the animals can't eat, he scraped out the oil and put it in another place.At this time, another person appeared. This person was really engaged in the gutter oil business. They set up a black processing factory. In order to get more and cheaper raw materials, they went door to door from these pig farms. The waste oil is collected, and then the waste oil can be turned into clear "edible oil" overnight.

We made a simple calculation, the price of edible oil in the market is 6,000 yuan per ton.The cost of waste oil, including labor, is about 300 yuan, and the refined waste oil can be sold for 3,000 yuan per ton!This is simply huge profits, higher than the profits of high-tech.In fact, it's not just waste oil. For example, pirated CDs, the profit of manufacturing CDs is similar to the profit of waste oil.In fact, the underground economy in these dark corners of China is very scary, not only with high profits, but also with high efficiency.Oriental Publishing House often jokes that my DVDs are not easy to sell. They very much hope to find pirated CD wholesalers in the underground economy and sell them to them at a low price of 2 yuan per disc. Asking them to sell it on their behalf is definitely smoother than regular channels. too much.But now there are a lot of my pirated books and CDs sold on the side of the road. I heard from those small businesses that the sales are not bad. This also shows that through the industrial chain of this underground economy, I have made a huge contribution to China's employment. of. I don't know if you believe it or not, but in fact, as long as there are people in the world, there will be hogwash.The key is to see how governments deal with this problem.I would like to start by talking about how Japan successfully disposes of gutter oil. In the 1960s, Japan, like us, also experienced the phenomenon of waste oil, but it was very short-lived. After the problem came out, it soon sank into the dust of history.How did Japan do it?Japan is a country that pays attention to environmental protection. The government uses a large amount of environmental protection funds to transform the waste oil, so that the waste oil can flow back to the first flow we mentioned above to form biofuels.You can see that the garbage trucks in Japan now use fuel converted from waste oil.Their specific method is to feed these people to the pigs after eating, and the pigs can’t finish the oil, and the government raises the purchase price, that is to say, the price you get when you sell the oil that the pigs can’t finish eating to the biofuel factory. If the price is higher than the price you sell to unscrupulous merchants, of course you will not sell these oils to unscrupulous merchants again.Therefore, the process of waste oil began to turn from this time, and turned into a raw material for the manufacture of biofuels. Moreover, while Japan is channeling the waste oil industry chain, it is also of great help to the employment of the country.Think about it, if you buy waste oil, do you need to hire low-level labor?Refining requires high-level labor and high-level technicians.And selling biofuels requires salespeople.Therefore, Japan has increased a lot of employment opportunities in the low, medium and high-end job markets by diverting the industrial chain of waste oil. Moreover, the division of labor between the Japanese environmental protection unit and the Industrial and Commercial Bureau is also very clear. The responsibility of the environmental protection unit is to check whether the fuel oil you manufacture is environmentally friendly, and the industrial and commercial bureau checks whether the quality of the fuel is up to standard.The roles played by Japan's Environmental Protection Agency and Industrial and Commercial Bureau are completely different from ours.The main task of our Environmental Protection Bureau and Industrial and Commercial Bureau is to fine, and if there is a problem in any link, it will be fined as soon as possible. We can't blame them, because they want to generate income!The Japanese government has played a very important role in the entire process of producing biofuels. The result of unblocking the waste oil industry chain is beneficial to the government and the people.At present, we have not how to untangle the industrial chain of waste oil, so it is very unfavorable to our consumers. In fact, in addition to food waste, swill, and fats such as swill, many things in China now conform to the so-called Chinese-style industrial chain we just mentioned.For example, disposable chopsticks were bought by unscrupulous businessmen after we used them. They re-bleached these used chopsticks and did some processing. Do you have such a strong sense of responsibility?For them, is it necessary to do disinfection?For them, as long as the color of the chopsticks looks the same after processing, there is really no need for disinfection, because disinfection is quite expensive.As long as it looks good and has no smell, it can be returned to the market.Regarding the discarded disposable chopsticks, I have to talk about Japan. In fact, I don’t like Japan very much, but many practices in Japan are worthy of our reference. Japan transforms these discarded disposable chopsticks into paper, and three A pair of chopsticks can make a piece of A4 paper. If you see it, this is environmental protection!So for our government, it is no problem if you want to block the industrial chain of these underground economies, but what happens after the blockage is over?You know, you can't stop it by blocking it alone. With such huge interests in it, if you want to solve the problem thoroughly, you need to guide it. How to guide it?That is, whether it is disposable chopsticks or waste oil, it cannot be allowed to flow back into our stomach.We need to transform this industrial chain into a beneficial industrial chain through guidance. This is our current top priority. In fact, many international financial giants and investment banks have such a keen sense of smell, including AIG, Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. They have already begun to invest in this emerging waste disposal industry, especially the new process of microbial fermentation technology.There is a company in Beijing called Jiabowen, which uses microbial fermentation technology to reprocess food waste including gutter oil. Goldman Sachs gave it the first financing of 160 million yuan.You see how discerning people are.After the gutter oil incident came out, we found that it was these investment banks that could really seize business opportunities. We often talk about high technology. Have you noticed that our thinking has entered a misunderstanding. We always think that only technologies such as integrated circuits are considered high technology.In fact, the transformation and diversion of existing underground industrial chains such as waste oil and garbage are also high-tech projects.Taking garbage as an example, it does not mean that it is enough to just burn it. If we separate the garbage, each type of garbage has its own use, and it is possible to form many industrial chains.As long as you can effectively channel these industrial chains, you can get rid of 70% to 80% of the garbage, which is what Japan does.And our Chinese ancestors already have a fine tradition of turning waste into treasure, why don't we carry forward this fine tradition? After becoming a formal doctor, I try to use some drugs that are in line with the patient's condition. If the side effects cannot be avoided, I will try to find the patient's discomfort as soon as possible and try to minimize the harm.Since then, I have been adhering to this principle in the process of treating patients.In the hospital, I also developed a public nuisance monitoring network system and an inspection system for prohibited drugs together with my colleagues, which provided strong support for the treatment work. However, I gradually felt that even with these monitoring and inspection systems, some problems still cannot be solved, and these problems have a tendency to increase year by year.The reason is that a large number of new drugs appeared after 1980. These new drugs are all toxic, not to mention treating diseases, including some improved drugs that have improved old drugs.These drugs are usually very expensive, so there is a phenomenon that the value of the drug does not match the price. In 1994 and 1995, relevant parties organized international price comparisons of medicines, and I myself made a personal assessment of the true value of medicines.After comparing these assessments with the published prices, I came to the conclusion that my speculation was correct: there is indeed a mismatch between the value of the drug and the price. In the 1990s, the sensational solivudine incident occurred in Japan (in 1993, due to the simultaneous use of anticancer drugs and anti-herpes zoster virus drugs, the drug caused 15 deaths within one month after it was launched) , In this incident, problems such as drug prices, medical system problems, and excessively broad scales of drug evaluation (letting patients see exaggerated effects and concealing the degree of harm of drugs) were fully exposed. "It is a three-point drug." Although aspirin works well, it may cause measles syndrome, a serious brain disease, so children should not use this drug when they have a cold or flu.Acetaminophen is a drug included in the WHO (World Health Organization) list of essential drugs, but if this drug is used in excess, it can cause liver dysfunction and even lead to death.The review of new drugs by relevant parties is actually not strict. Even if they are only used as ordinary drugs, the impact of these drugs on the human body is still more harmful than beneficial. This article is excerpted from [Japanese] Hama Rokuro's "The Medicine You Can't Take"