Twenty years ago, in 2003, the website of the former Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China published a "circular on the investigation and handling of Henan Lotus MSG Group Co., Ltd.'s intentional and secretive discharge of wastewater".
In the title of the "Circular", the definite phrase was added before secretly photographing wastewater: intentional. This characterization is extremely serious.
The former Ministry of Environmental Protection has undergone organizational reform and has been renamed the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China today, and the website has been revised countless times in the past 20 years, but this "Investigation" report is still hanging on the website.
Due to the Li Jiaqi and Hua Xizi incident, in just a few days, a group of domestic old brands were once again popular by "tap water" netizens, including Lotus MSG.
However, many people only see one message: the decline of Lotus MSG is because of the rumor of "delicate cancer of flavor". But the real situation is that this company has serious environmental pollution problems and internal management problems.
The so-called rumors may only be the last straw that crushed the MSG company.
The first in the industry deliberately discharged sewage, affecting more than 100 million people in the middle and lower reaches of the Huai River
According to the "Circular" of the former Ministry of Environmental Protection, Henan Lotus MSG Group Co., Ltd. is one of the 520 key enterprises identified by the national large-scale first-class enterprise, the national civilized unit and the State Council, and the monosodium glutamate production capacity ranks first in the same industry in the country. The above title shows that the lotus MSG was infinitely beautiful at that time.
In recent days, the article about Lotus MSG also said: At its peak, the national market share reached more than 40%, and a large number of people in the location of the enterprise were employed.
However, in a period around 2002, "the group used deceptive means to discharge a large amount of seriously excessive wastewater into the Shaying River, a first-class tributary of the middle reaches of the Huaihe River, through a secret channel, resulting in serious excess of major pollutants such as chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen in the Xiangcheng section of the Shaying River, and the local and downstream people reacted strongly." ”
You know, the Huai River Basin is one of the densest areas in the Chinese, with a population of 165 million. The people in the lower reaches of the Huai River could not bear the pollution of water quality, which shows how serious the illegal sewage discharged by Lotus MSG is. According to the "circular" of the former Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China, at the time of this visit, not a single drop of water was discharged into the No. 1 sewage outlet in the standardized factory area for 2 hours, and the amount of water finally injected into Lumagou (a tributary of the Shaying River) reached 9,000 tons/day, with a COD concentration of 4,000 mg/l, and a water temperature of 45 degrees Celsius; Among its 8 sewage outlets, 5 COD exceeded the standard and 6 ammonia nitrogen exceeded the standard; Lotus Group discharges 124,000 tons of wastewater (including 86.75 tons/day of COD discharge and 12.43 tons/day of ammonia nitrogen discharge) into the surrounding environment every day, so that the COD of Shaying River water increases from 62 mg/L before injection to 148 mg/L after injection, ammonia nitrogen from 10mg/L to 45mg/L, the degree of pollution increases by 3-4 times, the surface water quality deteriorates, and shallow groundwater is polluted, posing a serious threat to the life and production safety of local and downstream people.
The EPA director was implicated and the CSRC investigated
After the investigation by the former Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China was completed, penalties were imposed:
1. Suspension of production for treatment, fines, recovery of sewage fees, truncation of dark outlets, 4 branches of Lotus Group and production lines with serious pollution have been stopped for rectification.
2. The Zhoukou Municipal Government made a decision to remove Ma Chongfei, director of the Xiangcheng Environmental Protection Bureau, and instructed the vice mayor in charge of environmental protection work to conduct a thorough inspection.
3. The Environmental Protection Bureau of Henan Province imposed a fine of 50,000 yuan on the legal representative of Lotus Group. Lotus Group imposed financial penalties or removed the 15 responsible persons responsible for illegal pollution discharge.
At the beginning of this century, Lotus MSG not only faced pollution problems, but also had great problems in internal management as a listed company, which was investigated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. (For details, see Beijing News "Lotus MSG Life and Death Bureau")
Under the general trend of good money driving out bad money, do you still miss the domestic Sanlu milk powder?
In the eighties and nineties of the last century, it was the stage when domestic enterprises completed their primitive accumulation. At this stage, due to policy reasons, many enterprises have more or less "original sin" such as environmental pollution, sweatshops, and government-business collusion. However, after joining the WTO in 2000, China's economy ushered in a take-off, the original low-level expansion was no longer tolerated by policy and society, and a large number of enterprises began to be eliminated, which was a process of good money driving out bad money.
It is a good thing that old domestic products have become popular, but we cannot tolerate the revival of "evil" enterprises taking advantage of the goodwill of the people. Like, everyone will never tolerate the resurrection of Sanlu milk powder.