Chinese farmers spray wolfberries with industrial sulfur: state media

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV has revealed details of a second major food scandal to hit the country this year, this time involving wolfberries that had been smoked and soaked in banned chemicals.

In a report aired Sunday, the announcer spoke to wolfberry farmers and traders in a region covering 14 towns in Jingyuan County, Gansu Province. The report also covered farms in Golmud, a city in Qinghai Province.

At least half a dozen farm workers and traders openly described on camera how the farms soaked the berries in sodium metabisulfite, a banned substance in the industry, and then sprayed them with industrial sulfur to preserve their appearance.

“The ones smoked with sulfur are red and beautiful,” a shop owner told the announcer. “With the sulfur, you can keep it longer and vermin don’t grow there. The toxicity is high.”

CCTV showed farm workers preparing vats of thick, foaming sodium metabisulfite before washing wolfberries in the dangerous chemical. Sodium metabisulfite is sometimes used in food preservation but is banned in the local wolfberry industry, state media said.

According to CCTV footage, some farms are also smoking the wolfberries with industrial sulfur instead of sun-drying the harvest.

Wolfberries, also known as goji berries, are popular in traditional Chinese medicine and dishes such as hot pot, and have been marketed as a superfood in the West. In 2023, China exported an estimated 14,000 tons of wolfberries.

“People like you who sell in other places have no idea,” one trader told CCTV. “It just looks nice.”

Many traders and farmers talked about the dangers of eating wolfberries contaminated with chemicals, but said this was a common practice.

“With sulfur, you sell for 17 to 18 yuan per catty. Without smoking, it is 10 yuan per catty, 9 yuan per catty. That is not a good price,” said a rural farmer.

According to CCTV, staff tested the wolfberries and found them all to be unsafe for consumption.

A day after the report was published, the Jingyuan County Food Safety Bureau announced that it had launched an investigation into local production and sales of wolfberries.

“Those responsible for violations of the law and regulations will be severely punished according to law,” the office said in a statement.

The Golmud city council issued a similar statement on Monday.

The wolfberry scandal comes just two months after another major food safety incident shocked the country.

In early July, state-run Beijing News reported that it had discovered multiple cases of unwashed chemical tankers being used to transport cooking oil. The practice had become so common that workers were talking about it as an industry standard, the paper said.

China has been plagued by a decades-long history of food scandals, from contaminated milk powder to sewage oil being reused in restaurants, that have eroded Chinese consumer confidence in commercially sold food products.

Since his early days as China’s leader, Xi Jinping has promised to crack down on food safety violations, saying they play a major role in how people view the government.

“If our party, while governing China, cannot even guarantee food safety, and cannot do so in the long term, then people will start to wonder whether we are qualified to govern,” he said in 2013.

There have been previous allegations of excessive sulfur use in the Chinese traditional medicine industry, leading to retailers often marketing wolfberries and other products as “sulfite-free.”