China-Canada food safety pact could be a killer of a deal

Patri­cia adams Patri­cia Adams, an eco­nom­ist, is exec­ut­ive dir­ector of Probe Inter­na­tional, a China watch­dog.

22 Apr 2026

In Janu­ary, Canada’s Food Inspec­tion Agency and China’s cus­toms author­ity signed a memor­andum of under­stand­ing to enhance co-oper­a­tion on food safety and animal and plant health. Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney framed it as part of a bilat­eral reset aim­ing for smoother trade. On paper, it estab­lishes tech­nical work­ing groups, inform­a­tion-shar­ing and bien­nial meet­ings. In prac­tice, it asks Cana­dian con­sumers and reg­u­lat­ors to trust a food sys­tem with a well-doc­u­mented his­tory of repeated, some­times lethal, fail­ures.

China’s food-related prob­lems are neither ancient his­tory nor isol­ated incid­ents. One in 10 meals con­sumed in the coun­try is estim­ated to be cooked with “gut­ter oil” recycled from res­taur­ant waste and sew­ers. Cats are picked up from the streets and sold as pork or mut­ton for skew­ers and saus­age stuff­ing. Cad­mium-con­tam­in­ated rice from pol­luted regions like Hunan is com­mon. Weight-loss sup­ple­ments sold as “nat­ural” have con­tained undeclared sibut­ram­ine, a banned drug linked to heart risks.

The 2008 melamine scan­dal in infant for­mula killed at least six babies and sickened hun­dreds of thou­sands, with offi­cials delay­ing warn­ings to pro­tect the Beijing Olympics’ image. In 2014, expired and spoiled meat from a Shang­hai sup­plier reached major fast-food chains across Asia. In 2024, major grain and oil firms were exposed using uncleaned fuel tankers to trans­port edible oils — a cost-cut­ting prac­tice that had become routine.

More recently, over 200 chil­dren were hos­pit­al­ized after eat­ing lead-tain­ted food in a north­w­est China kinder­garten. Just last month, author­it­ies found vendors were using kid­ney ­and liver-dam­aging sed­at­ives in fish trans­port tanks to keep fish from los­ing scales, then telling their cus­tom­ers the motion­less fish were merely “sleep­ing.”

China’s gov­ern­ment claims its food is bey­ond reproach, point­ing to its Food Safety Law (enacted in 2009, strengthened in 2015) and Pres­id­ent Xi Jin­ping’s “Four Strict­est” require­ments: pre­cise stand­ards, strict admin­is­tra­tion, harsh account­ab­il­ity and grave pun­ish­ment. On paper, pen­al­ties include large fines, pun­it­ive dam­ages, crim­inal charges and even exe­cu­tion. But cor­rup­tion rules. The Com­mun­ist Party and those favoured by it freely dis­reg­ard the legal sys­tem.

Enforce­ment is select­ive, driven more by polit­ical loy­alty, GDP tar­gets and social sta­bil­ity than con­sist­ent con­sumer pro­tec­tion. Coverups are often shiel­ded.

If neces­sary, pro­du­cers rebrand and relo­cate, while high-pro­file crack­downs can seem per­form­at­ive. Without an inde­pend­ent judi­ciary and con­straints on Party power, food safety is not just a tech­nical but a sys­temic gov­ernance fail­ure. Incent­ives to cut corners for profit under com­pet­it­ive and polit­ical pres­sure endure.

Those in priv­ileged pos­i­tions have for dec­ades avoided the foods most Chinese are resigned to eat. Since the 1960s, Com­mun­ist Party offi­cials have sourced high-qual­ity, uncon­tam­in­ated, care­fully tested “spe­cial pro­vi­sion” foods for them­selves and their fam­il­ies through the tegong sys­tem of secret farms. Private com­pan­ies also provide safe food for their employ­ees as perks. Fox­conn runs its own tested, trace­able farms to avoid pesti­cides, heavy metals, para­sites and other con­tam­in­ants in their com­pany canteens.

Cana­dians have reason for cau­tion. Access to Inform­a­tion invest­ig­a­tions have revealed that between Janu­ary 2017 and early 2019, the Cana­dian Food Inspec­tion Agency flagged nearly 900 ship­ments from China over con­tam­in­ants such as metals found in minced gar­lic, gum­balls and had­dock filets;

CHINA’S FOOD-RELATED PROBLEMS ARE NEITHER ANCIENT HISTORY NOR ISOLATED INCIDENTS.

glass in bam­boo shoots and ses­ame paste noodles; para­sites in wild cod filets; and heavy metals in candy. Aller­gens, includ­ing pea­nuts, were found in 584 products. And 85 cases involved “Product mis­rep­res­ent­a­tion/authen­ti­city.”

Des­pite a pat­tern of wide­spread con­tam­in­a­tion, Canada denied entry to only four ship­ments. The U.S., which imports roughly 10 times as much food from China as Canada, refused entry to 1,828 Chinese ship­ments dur­ing the same period — more than 40 times as many. In the EU, China ranks first for food import safety alerts and refus­als. Canada’s rank­ing of China is not avail­able because, unlike its coun­ter­parts in other west­ern nations, the CFIA does not release com­pre­hens­ive data of its refus­als of food imports.

Under the new MOU, Chinese-owned or joint-ven­ture oper­a­tions will func­tion inside Canada, their sup­ply chains extend­ing back to China for ingredi­ents or meth­ods. Though laden with lan­guage to reas­sure Cana­dian trade nego­ti­at­ors, the MOU does not magic­ally san­it­ize those rela­tion­ships. If a Cana­dian fact­ory sources addit­ives or raw mater­i­als through the same opaque net­works that pro­duced gut­ter oil or melamine milk, Cana­dian con­sumers will eat the risk.