Zhongjing Commentary: What should I do if the meat stinks and the reputation "stinks"?

Source: China Economic Network

This is uncomfortable. Recently, the media reported that RT-Mart Shandong Jinan Province Bo store, the overnight meat, odorous meat after washing special prices, spoiled meat hinge sausage. On the morning of August 16, RT-Mart apologized through Weibo, saying that it had sealed and removed all relevant meat products, suspended the employees involved for investigation, and the store would immediately rectify it, and from now on, it will carry out self-inspection and self-correction in stores across the country.

Media exposure - the company involved apologized, how familiar is the process, but why not long memory? On August 13, the Jinan Municipal Market Supervision Bureau just interviewed the person in charge of RT-Mart's North China headquarters and the heads of some stores in Jinan for allegedly selling food that exceeded its shelf life and falsifying the date of food production. Now it seems that RT-Mart did not take the interview and rectification to heart, but went farther and farther on the road of smashing its own signboard. What worries consumers is that RT-Mart, as a well-known supermarket chain, is still like this, so will the sale of spoiled overnight meat be the unspoken rule of the industry?

Recently, from the "popular king" of the takeaway platform - Wallace fried chicken, to the "net red" of the milk tea industry - Nai Xue's tea, a number of catering brands have become the focus of food safety issues. The problems of exposure mainly focus on the lack of implementation of the system, the irregularity of processing operations, the expiration of raw materials, and the poor health conditions. Look, are these problems very similar to RT-Mart's? Whether it is selling spoiled overnight meat or rotting fruit to continue to use, it is a "saving trick" that enterprises have come up with in order to reduce production costs, and such a trick does not consider the safety of consumers at all.

Objectively speaking, in recent years, the relevant departments have spent a lot of effort to grasp supervision, and the food safety situation has continued to improve. But why are some companies "desperate"? Generally speaking, supermarkets or catering companies will formulate rules and regulations on food safety. However, whether the staff can strictly implement it is closely related to factors such as supervision, assessment, punishment, and self-discipline. Some producers and operators ignore food safety for economic benefits, and such a fluke psychology still has a certain living space. It is like filling sausages with spoiled meat, which is obviously illegal, and if it is not for media exposure, the companies involved may always pretend to be deaf and dumb. In addition, the relevant regulatory penalties were not enough to hammer the violators to seven inches. In August last year, RT-Mart was fined a total of RMB5,020.40 for "operating food labeled food that did not meet food safety standards". Obviously, such a penalty has not made the company hesitate. This also gives the regulatory authorities a wake-up call: only by establishing the most stringent standards, implementing the strictest supervision, implementing the most severe punishments, and adhering to the most serious accountability can operators be in awe and consumers feel at ease.

Food safety is the most basic people's livelihood, and it must be strictly guarded against death, which is a mandatory question that the regulatory authorities cannot bypass. Throughout the years, many of the food safety incidents that have attracted attention have come from the public and the media, rather than the discoveries of the regulatory authorities. To solve this problem, on the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen daily supervision, innovate regulatory means, promote the application of big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things and other technologies in the field of food safety supervision, timely discover problems, and use the power of technology to enhance the supervision effect; on the other hand, it is necessary to smooth the channels for complaints and reports, encourage the participation of the whole people, strengthen social co-governance, and weave a dense food safety "protective network".

For enterprises, deep ploughing in an industry and establishing a brand require long-term accumulation, while "bad reputation" is in the blink of an eye. At present, with the continuous improvement of people's awareness of food safety and the increasing emphasis on health, whether it is supermarkets or catering enterprises, food safety is the lifeline of development. If enterprises disregard responsibilities for profits, and constantly break the bottom line and hit the red line, it will eventually be spurned by the market. If the reputation is bad, it is difficult to get it back, so don't sell the future for short-term benefits.

"Safety on the tip of the tongue" is related to everyone's life and health, only by adhering to "zero tolerance" in all links, and making a quick hand and a heavy fist to illegal acts can people eat safely and eat at ease. (China Economic Network commentator Liang Yu)

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