75% orange juice raw material imported by China's juice industry source control fatigue

Coca-Cola, a Brazilian orange juice, contains an unapproved report of carbendazim, which pushes the world-renowned Brazilian orange juice to the cusp and accepts global consumers' questions about its safety. Although the levels of carbendazim in Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola products are not enough to affect health, the current controversy has caused concern about Chinese orange juice and food safety. After all, 75% of Chinese orange juice depends on imports. The current situation of weak source control has gradually surfaced.

A number of beverage giants have imported Brazilian orange juice A few days ago, Coca-Cola found unlicensed fungicides in orange juice and reported it to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The raw orange involved in this incident was from Brazil, and the local carbendazim was used to kill mold. According to the US food safety standards, carbendazim is not allowed as a fungicide, but carbendazim is a legitimate fungicide in major orange juice import regions such as China, the European Union, and Japan.

Coca-Cola China subsequently issued a statement saying that the orange juice used in China is safe and reliable and meets the national raw material quality standards. PepsiCo also detected trace amounts of the bactericide carbendazim contained in its "True Fruit" orange juice. However, Pepsi stated that the content is lower than the standards set by the US federal regulatory agency and does not constitute a health risk.

However, there are far more beverage companies that import orange juice from Brazil. “There are many companies that use Brazilian orange juice in China, involving many well-known beverage companies such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Huiyuan Juice, and this part of the company occupies a relatively high market share,” said Liang Mingxuan, a food industry researcher with China Investment Advisors, who told Nandu. According to statistics, Huiyuan has imported frozen concentrated orange juice from Brazil, Israel and the United States. The unified group spokesman Yang Shouzheng also said that the company imported a small amount of orange juice from Brazil and was tested by the government and third-party testing agencies.

Although production companies are trying their best to meet their domestic testing standards, it is an indisputable fact that China's current restrictions on carbendazim are more lenient than those of the United States and the European Union. According to the standards of the US Environmental Protection Agency, the content of carbendazim in orange juice residues in the US market is below 80 ppb, EU standards are 200 ppb, and Australian standards do not even exceed 10 ppb. According to China's "Maximum Residue Limits for Carbendazim in Food", the maximum residue limit for citrus is 5m g/kg, watermelon 0.5mg/kg, and leek 2m g/kg. The standard unit for citrus residues is 5000 ppb, which is far below the European and American standards.

The domestic juice industry heavily imported the turmoil of the orange juice. It also made the domestic fruit juice industry rely heavily on the fact that imports were naked. How high is the dependency? According to Liang Mingxuan, domestic beverage companies rely heavily on imported orange juice, 75% of their raw materials come from abroad, and 60% of some brands of fresh orange juice are imported from Brazil. Brazil is China's largest importer of orange juice, and other orange juice importers mainly include Israel and the United States. According to the data, in 2011, China was the fourth largest importer and exporter of Brazilian orange juice.

Why does China rely so heavily on imported orange juice? Liang Mingxuan pointed out that China was once a country of origin and production of citrus, but due to backward technology, poor product variety improvement results, technology, processing, insurance, storage and other aspects are not in place, resulting in domestic companies mostly rely on imports to meet the consumer demand for orange juice . According to Zhu Danpeng, a researcher at the China Food Business Research Institute, the current layout of domestic oranges and the layout of production bases are still not perfect, which increases the cost of using domestic raw materials. After integrating the combined costs of raw material costs and logistics costs, the imported and domestic orange juice ingredients have a spread of at least 10%, which has prompted domestic orange juice manufacturers to prefer imported raw materials.

However, over-reliance on imported orange juice undoubtedly increases the risk of quality control of fruit juice drinks, and it also imposes certain constraints on the development of upstream and downstream beverages. “At present, China’s consumption demand for natural and nutritious orange juice grows at a rate of more than 20% per year. The market has great potential, and the price of concentrated orange juice on the international market has soared from US$1,500 to US$2,500-3,000 per ton.” Liang Mingxuan believed that It is necessary to reverse the current pattern of domestic orange juice market mainly relying on imports.