ZHENGZHOU, China -- A few days ago, an alarmed teacher at a day care center in this city south of Beijing called emergency services when some of her charges began to vomit. Ambulances rushed to Xinxin Day Care, and doctors later treated about 50 youngsters.
The culprit was tainted soy milk, but it was nothing dire, and the children were home by dusk. However, the way in which local authorities handled the case - by suppressing the news - added to the parents' anguish and the concerns about the safety of food processing in China.
That concern is spreading to North America, where in the past five weeks U.S. authorities have recalled about 100 brands of dog and cat food made with wheat gluten and rice protein ingredients from China thought to be tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizers. Now U.S. poultry and pig farms are on alert for feed made from the discarded pet food.
China's Foreign Ministry denied Thursday that melamine-tainted protein exports sold to the United States had caused the spate of pet deaths. President Hu Jintao urged China's farmers and food-processing industry last week to improve food safety, prompted by the quickening pace of scandals over adulterated and tainted food.
The food scare shows a country caught between old habits of covering up - or denying - outbreaks of food-related illness and a modern desire to address problems squarely as the nation becomes a link in the global food chain.
Chinese citizens themselves worry a great deal about the safety of their food.
A survey by China's Food and Drug Administration, cited by the state Xinhua news agency, found that 65 percent of Chinese are concerned about the food supply.
Food poisoning made headlines repeatedly in the past three weeks alone.
Watermelon tainted by pesticides sickened residents in Guangdong and Shaanxi provinces last week. In southern Fujian province, 34 students fell ill after eating mushrooms at a cafeteria April 17.
A day earlier, 60 migrant workers grew sick in Shanghai from canteen food.
Police are investigating how rat poison got into breakfast food at a hospital in Harbin on April 9, making 200 people ill and killing one person.
The tendency to cover up, or minimize, the cases is strong in China.
When the children fell ill Wednesday at the Xinxin Day Care in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, the national news agency carried a brief item, but local news media carried nothing, despite the anguish of parents.
