Keeping the Mystery Out of China's Meat

When the yellow liquid in a test tube containing tiny pieces of string beans turns clear, Chloe Fan knows why. A nearby computer screen quickly confirms her suspicion: Pesticide levels in the sample are twice as high as accepted standards. Fan, a Wal-Mart Stores food scientist in Guangzhou, runs another test, then has the shipment of beans pulled, stopping a batch of chemical-laced vegetables from reaching customers at the retailer’s stores in China. Hers is a job that can’t be taken for granted. “China has food safety rules,” says Fan, 24, clad in a white laboratory coat and surrounded by beakers and test tubes, “but not all suppliers in China understand and follow them.”

Wal-Mart has learned that lesson repeatedly on the mainland, most recently when authorities earlier this year said meat sold as donkey at its Chinese stores contained fox DNA, triggering a recall by the Bentonville (Ark.)-based retailer. That wasn’t an isolated occurrence. A seemingly endless string of scandals—from melamine-tainted milk that killed six infants and sickened 300,000 others in 2008 to rat meat recently sold as mutton—has made China the Wild West of food safety. Inadequate government oversight also is forcing big Western companies, from Wal-Mart to Nestlé to French supermarket operator Carrefour, to put on their sheriff’s hats and take food policing into their own hands.