(Beijing) – There’s no denying that the gastronomic horizons of Chinese cuisines sometimes verge on the infinite. But on factors of food quality, there’s little subtlety or nuance over the level of safety standards.

In the past five years, the number of public food and drug safety scandals has hit new highs. In 2008, there was the tainted milk scandal. Then, this year’s poisoned medicine capsule case and contaminated cooking oil scandal signaled that there continue to be severe barriers to the adequate protection of public health.

With scandals now regularly uncovered in nearly every sector of food production, the industry as a whole appears to be under siege. Not long ago, a company in Foshan, Guangdong Province, was exposed by local media outlets of adding cancer-causing salt to food products. Across the country, the practice of spraying cabbage with formaldehyde remains a top concern. On pig farms, the use of the toxic additive clenbuterol in feed has also raised alarms.

Caixin has found that these publicized food safety scandals represent only a fraction of unsafe food production practices. Hundreds of chemical food additives are pumped into products that Chinese people consume every day.

Lack of Moderation

In the three-plus decades since China began reform and opening up, regulatory standards have not been able to keep up with the ingenuity of food manufacturers.

At the end of May 2012, the State Food and Drug Administration announced the results of inspections of nearly every pharmaceutical company. The report found that 5.8 percent of all capsules on drugstore shelves contained excessive levels of chromium, a toxic heavy metal substance. According to the report, 254 companies replaced edible gelatin with industrial grade gelatin when producing drug capsules. The number of firms accounted for more than 12 percent of total drug producers in the country.

Zhu Yi, a food safety expert at the China Agricultural University, said the discovery has implications that cross over to other industries. While medical products are more carefully monitored, the food and cosmetics industries receive even less government scrutiny.

The central government continues to expend a huge amount of resources quelling the panic that follows media reports of food safety scandals. In April 2011, the Ministry of Health issued a list of 47 possible toxic additives in the food system. However, food safety experts say such lists issued by the government are far from complete, adding that razor-thin profit margins among food producers continue to drive the use of toxic chemicals.