Under plastic: "disinfected" tableware Photo: Wang Zi
Nearly half the companies offering sterilized tableware to the capital city are unqualified and under-regulated, an International Food Packaging Association spokesman warned Wednesday.
"Even the sterilized tableware provided by eligible factories is not 100 percent clean," said its secretary-general Dong Jinshi.
"I think 90 percent of 'disinfected' tableware in the city's restaurants is unqualified."
In his visits to many of 110 legal certificated tableware sanitization factories of the city, Dong often discovered that the sterilizing machinery had been switched off and replaced with cheaper manpower.
"I won't even mention the conditions in the illegal workshops," he said.
A China Central Television report last week found some factories reusing the same dishwater over and over again.
Unhygienic dishwashing, no sterilization, lingering viruses and detergent residues are all hiding under a thin layer of transparent plastic at city restaurants.
A standard sterilization process for one set of utensils costs 0.7 yuan ($0.1), according to Dong. A restaurant usually charges 1 yuan ($0.15) a packet.
"The small profit margin encourages restaurants to turn to cheaper tableware suppliers," Dong said, "and there's no department supervising this area."
Regulations introduced by the Ministry of Health May 11 "contain no detailed requirements or penalty clauses," Dong said.
"Both the companies and the Ministry of Health aren't clear about what and how to deal with it."
The city's Tableware Cleaning and Disinfection Association is organizing a national industrial conference on August 19 to discuss supervision and possible improvements to the industry.
"We hope local authorities can issue guidelines to tableware sterilization companies as soon as possible," said Zhang Feng, association secretary-general.
"For now it's still very difficult to identify what kind of tableware is really qualified."
There are no detailed standards for this emerging industry, he explained.
"You can only use your naked eyes to identify, or refuse to pay, or bring your own plates and chopsticks."
Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce issues business licenses to companies to sterilize tableware for about 1,000 restaurants, an industry worth more than 150 million yuan ($22 million), according to a statement e-mailed by Zhang.