Some Worms with Your Water?

Posted 7:00pm Mon Jul 25th, 2011 by beijingkids
  • 417 reads

This week's food safety scandal comes courtesy of Nongfu bottled water (农夫山泉矿泉水), which allegedly now comes with worm eggs inside its red screw caps. 

According to an article in The China Daily, a Tongzhou shopkeeper and one of her customers claim to have discovered "cream-colored worm eggs, as big as sesame seeds" inside the caps of some bottles of the popular brand. The customer's son also reportedly became ill after ingesting the water (they claim the boy didn't see the eggs until after taking a few sips) and was later diagnosed with "acute enteritis" by a doctor.

In a letter sent to Sina Finance on July 21, Nongfu denied any wrongdoing and claims the "eggs were on the outside of the bottles, not the inside," thus entailing that the company was not responsible for any contamination found in its water and placing the blame on the shopkeepers' storage methods - a classic, "he said, she said" scenario.

These kinds of cases are extremely difficult to assess - on one hand, too many domestic companies engage in incredibly unscrupulous practices when it comes to ensuring the safety of their products, but then again, there are instances where consumer complaints turn out to be false alarms, or in the instance of the now-debunked Sprite mercury poisoning case last year, outright bogus. 

The jury is still out on whether or not there is any legitimacy to this particular consumer complaint, but Nongfu's relatively strong brand image will undoubtedly suffer regardless of the outcome. At the very least you'll want to think twice before putting your lips around any plastic bottle that's fresh off the store shelf.

In the meantime, here's a link to Aquasana China's main site and its address below:

Rm 405, MOMA, 199 Chaoyang Beilu, Chaoyang District (136 5128 5157 English, 138 1058 4564 Chinese, shop@aquasana-china.com) www.aquasana-china.com

Check out the BeijingKids forum for more discussion on under-the-sink-water purifiers.

 More coverage on Shanghaiist (note the first reader comment) and Agenda.

Re: Some Worms with Your Water?

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At 8:11am Tue Jul 26th, 2011 admin said:

I believe the sanitary standards at the average xiao mai bu is much more likely to be to blame than the Nongfu bottling plant. Come on, take a look at the million places that sell water -- a good number of them are hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop shops that double as the living room for the shopkeeper. Not to mention I'm guessing plenty of the xiao mai bu out there are refilling empty bottles of various types, or are (intentionally or unintentionally) buying couterfeit bottles.

I've found plenty of disgusting stuff on the outside of beer bottles here in beijing and has never occurred to me that stuff on the outside of the bottle (even around the bottlecap) would be the bottling plant's fault -- given the places where I've found it sold. Ever take a look into the kitchen at a Beijing restaurant?

I'm on Nongfu's side on this one. This seems like an un-necessary smear on their reputation. Unfortunately in this world of instantaneous communication where people are always hyper-eager to spread bad news as fast as they possibly can, the entire world can can hear of a single incident involving a single customer in buying a single bottle of water in a single, anonmous xiao mai bu in the outer suburbs of a city of 20 million people.

buyer beware -- but don't blame Nongfu

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