Individual efforts
Most of the food activists say they are driven to advocate food safety after finding themselves deeply concerned about the situation in the country.
The China Food and Drug Administration said in a food safety report on the first half of this year that 96.3 percent of food products it tested in its random inspection, which involves grain, oil, meat, egg and milk products, passed quality tests.
However, problems such as excessive residues of pesticides in agricultural produce remain severe, said Teng Jiacai, deputy head of the administration, at a news conference in August.
According to a report released by Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in January, food safety tops the list of rumors in China's social media.
Researchers at the university found 488 articles reported as rumors on WeChat, of which 288, or 47 percent, were about food safety.
Meanwhile, food safety incidents continue to erupt across the country, as the country reported a number of food poisoning cases in schools.
In one of the most recent cases, 54 schoolchildren in Lingtai, Gansu province, were hospitalized after having symptoms such as nausea and diarrhea on Sept 11 in a suspected food poisoning case, China News Service reported.
In June, hundreds of students at a high school in Liaozhong, Liaoning province, were hospitalized in a suspected food poisoning case.
Sun Huanping, the activist, said it remained a very difficult job for food safety watchdogs to monitor the situation at the local level.
"There are simply too many business owners and too many workers in the industry. There are also too many transactions in the market, making it impossible for authorities to monitor," he said.
Sun said that after years of food activism, he found his efforts were unable to even change the situation in his hometown.
China Central Television reported in November that some vendors in Huai'an were trying to add industrial additives, including hydrogen peroxide, to prolong the shelf life of pork products.
"All I can do is to ensure the safety of food served in my restaurants," he said.
"You need to give enough profit margin to the vendors so that they will give you the right products. I tried to make bean sprouts on my own, knowing that the risk would be too high to purchase them in markets," he said.
