How much carcinogen do you eat? We tested Hong Kong food items flagged over the past decade. Here’s what we found
- Post enlists the city’s leading food test laboratory to carry out checks on the most worrying product categories in previous Consumer Council findings
- Experts say that while city’s overall food safety is satisfactory, authorities have not established clear consumption limits for several potentially harmful chemicals
The amounts of carcinogens or cancer-causing substances in several brands of cooking oil, soy sauce, cookies, biscuits and crisps sold in Hong Kong have fallen below levels first recorded over the past decade by the Consumer Council, laboratory tests commissioned by the Post reveal.
The moves suggest an improvement in standards. Whether they were prompted by the initial negative media exposure is unclear, but they were not driven by any subsequent lobbying or pressure by the council.
Experts said based on the Post findings and other available guidelines, the city’s overall food safety was satisfactory, but they also pointed out that a decade since the consumer watchdog began such studies, authorities had not established clear consumption limits for potentially harmful chemicals such as glycidol, 3-MCPD and acrylamide.
Interest in carcinogens has been growing in recent years as people become more health-conscious, and the consumer watchdog shifted its focus to study the presence of such substances in food popular in the city. Even as its mission is to protect residents’ rights in the marketplace, the watchdog had said it needed to zero in on carcinogens to enable consumers to know their exposure level and better gauge risk.
However, the statutory body adopted a one-off approach and over the years did not check the same products again, did not insist on accountability on the part of manufacturers or distributors and left residents in the dark over whether food they ate regularly should continue to be a cause for concern.
