Why we worry about food!

Reports of Chinese cabbages tainted with formaldehyde in east China's Shandong Province, the country's largest vegetable supplier have exposed clandestine market practices and triggered a new wave of food safety concerns.Over the weekend, there were reports that vegetable dealers in Qingzhou had been seen spraying formaldehyde on Chinese cabbages .

In visits to farms and wholesale centers, Xinhua news agency reporters found that using the formaldehyde solution has been a popular, unspoken method of keeping vegetables fresh for at least three years and was not limited to Qingzhou. Many local farmers turn a blind eye to dealers treating the cabbages with formaldehyde. "It's a common practice to keep the cabbages fresh," says Yin Lihua, a farmer in Qingzhou's Dongxia township. "Otherwise, the vegetables stacked tightly in their trucks would rot in two to three days." China's wholesale vegetable dealers are not required to use refrigerated trucks for produce, and few can afford them. Yesterday morning, trucks were lined up near Yin's greenhouse, waiting to take the cabbages to faraway cities for sale.

Zhao Mingli, a dealer from the northeastern Heilongjiang Province, was caught by police while spraying the chemical solution. Zhao told them he used the spray to keep the cabbages in good condition during a 10-hour journey to Langfang, a city on the Hebei-Beijing border. "Vegetable dealers in Langfang openly demand formaldehyde-preserved cabbages because they sell more easily. I just did what everyone else was doing for three or four years. Zhao said 2.5 liters of solution costs only 7 yuan and can keep 20 tons of vegetables fresh. Zhao was one of dozens of vegetable dealers apprehended by police in Dongxia township. They admitted having sold formaldehyde-tainted vegetables to many provinces, and many said they ate the tainted cabbages themselves. "You just do away with the first layer of leaves, cut the root and rinse well," Zhao said.

For the record, formaldehyde is used as a disinfectant and embalming fluid and has been declared a known human carcinogen. It is also a skin, eye and respiratory irritant. In 2008, China banned it as an illegal food additive however that hasn't seemed to concern these farmers.

So now you know why we pay so much for produce that is flown in from Australia or grown on farms managed by expats who care about what they are eating.