China’s Counterfeiters Get Seedy
China Real Time adds another entry to the bulky catalogue of fake Chinese products, marking a collision of brand hijacking, scientific fraud and dubious food provenance: ordinary seeds sold as genetically modified or superior strains from Monsanto and other biotechnology firms.
These high-end seeds are desirable because they’re engineered to grow reliably, with an estimated yield that’s 10 to 15 percent higher than the generic crop. Analysts tell the state-run China Daily that this sort of piracy is rampant among a third of local seed companies, which number as many as 8,700 nationwide in China ….
Counterfeit seeds are not a new phenomenon in China, but observers say the problem has lately become worse – a trend that might be a consequence of China’s efforts to create a Pioneer or Monsanto of its own.
Last year, the country’s agriculture ministry proposed rules that would raise the level of capital needed to register a seed-producing enterprise. Analysts say the new rules, which have yet to be put into effect, would reduce the number of qualified Chinese seed producers to just around 200. Meanwhile, China’s cabinet is encouraging mergers and acquisitions in the sector – just as they are in other commodities like steel and rare earth – in the hopes, China’s state council said, of “fostering companies with international competitiveness.”
This consolidation reflects policy across the food industry, as The Wall Street Journal notes in a report on China’s recent food safety crackdown.
Experts say safety issues have to do largely with the structure of China’s food industry, which is extremely fragmented, making production oversight difficult. China has some 200 million farming households and 400,000 food-processing enterprises with fewer than 10 employees, said Christopher Hickey, the China director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The government has said it wants to consolidate the agricultural and food manufacturing sectors, but the process has been slow—in part because officials need to balance that desire against the need to keep hundreds of millions of rural residents employed.
The crackdown led to over 2,000 arrests and the closure of some 5,000 businesses, though a Peking University professor of public health warns that such short-term campaigns are easily ridden out by many offenders, who simply hide until the coast is clear.
