From the Economist:
Eating can be a risky business in China: 87 people died in one recent outbreak of food poisoning. Yet the authorities and the media seem oddly fixated on the supposed transgressions of foreign firms.
Earlier this month health inspectors began looking into KFC’s practice of adding a preservative called magnesium trisilicate to cooking oil and then reusing it for up to ten days. The press pounced on the story, drumming up experts who claimed that eating food cooked this way could cause cancer. Inevitably, the papers devoted much less coverage to the investigation’s eventual findings: that KFC complied fully with local safety standards. Other foreign food-makers, including H√§agen-Dazs, Heinz, Kraft and Nestl√©, have suffered similar bad publicity.
Such stories are commonplace. [Full Text]