In brief
A troubling food safety scandal in northwest China has led to the hospitalization of over 200 children after they were fed lead-contaminated food at a kindergarten, sparking public outrage and serious concerns over local officials’ accountability.
In a shocking incident from Tianshui, Gansu Province, more than 200 children were hospitalized after consuming food tainted with lead at Peixin Kindergarten, prompting a significant public outcry and raising concerns about the efficacy of local health protections. The scandal erupted when investigations revealed that chefs at the school used harmful, inedible pigments, purchased online, to decorate meals aimed at appealing to young students. Authorities have detained eight school officials, including the principal and an investor, as a consequence of the investigation. Tianshui police chief, Guo Qingxiang, stated that the institution had used brightly colored food items—like bright yellow corn-shaped sausage buns and vibrantly layered red date cakes—as marketing tools to boost student enrollment. Security footage shared by state media allegedly shows kitchen staff adding bright powdered pigments to flour in preparation for the meals. Alarmingly, lab tests revealed that the sausage buns and red date cakes had lead levels more than 2,000 times above the national safety limit. Despite the outcry, some parents voiced frustrations over local clinics’ reluctance to adequately diagnose the lead exposure. As a result, numerous families made the journey of over 200 miles to Xi’an for more reliable tests after initial evaluations in Tianshui proved unsatisfactory. Reports later confirmed that among the 251 children from the kindergarten who underwent testing, 233 exhibited elevated lead levels, with several remaining hospitalized. Law enforcement officials carried out a raid on the kindergarten last Thursday, seizing inventories of harmful powdered pigments from the site. The kindergarten, which obtained its operating license in June 2022, only began admitting students a few months later. The issue of food safety, a lingering concern in China, has garnered attention lately as conditions have improved since notorious incidents involving tainted milk powder and reused cooking oil in the past decade. This is not the first lead poisoning case in Tianshui; a similar episode in 2006 linked to a lead and zinc smelter resulted in over 200 residents testing positive for high lead levels, though the actual cause was never confirmed.
