Live on Bloomberg TV

00:00Well this runs to a deeper malaise does it not Sebastian. Well it's true that it has been breaking the news like for a night quite quite a few times in the case of the Titans. It's not something that you really can test in a laboratory and say you are right but that is not. But it's very linked to poor sanitation and safe water and poor personal hygiene. And when you look at the different issue of groundwater being absorbed by gap areas and then of course then being packaged and sent abroad . Absolutely. In China today it's estimated that 60 percent of groundwater are polluted. You have about one tenth of China farmland that is contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium or lead. And so meaning that every food produced in China at present unusable essentially honorable. What it means is that at risk at risk of having viruses such as equal I Listeria Salmonella having a few metals. And so this is a massive issue . And in China you have a problem of water and you have a problem at source which is about the waste management. There is no control. Forget management is that the real reason is that the common theme on your inspections that you find that that is what it goes on to Waste Management poorly done. Actually if you look at our inspection last year we just got to the figures because I know I would meet you this morning 48 percent of our food inspection has been failed in China 48 so one out of two the main reasons are different. But generally in China you have a problem of awareness of the factory manager. You also have in this specific industry and not in China because you know the industries are very much cleaner but you have a problem of there is a culture of concealment in the food industry because the truth is you have two hundred thousand different type of gastroenteritis. And when you're sick when you have a bit of food poisoning can you still make you don't always come from his from your breakfast at the restaurant you have been at lunch . You don't really know. And the factory manager you know in China as not only that can kill you you know you forget about it that's when that is gone. OK. So is it is that concealment or is it just a lack of education. It's a bit of both. There is a problem of training and education of those factories a factory manager we export China export for 60 billion worth of goods in a year. China is a first exporter of pigs out in the world . Sorry for our Italian friend but it tells you that the magnitude and the scale to that and they are not aware of all the standards. So they are the biggest exporter of peaches in China . Absolutely. I never knew. But to be very fair to the Chinese Marco Polo brought the pigs from China. Anyways if you look at the 500000 food processing license facilities in China. Four million. Only zero point three percent which is about 1500 of the BRC audit which is the most common food audit for a factory in Europe in the US or in Japan. This is 95 98 percent zero point three percent have been approved by the BSE so it tells you that much as to be done. Done. Absolutely. Is there an unwillingness by authorities as well is there some sort of complicity with authorities too many nonmilitary CEOs . Definitely wants to tackle. We see it now in the past few years . The population is complaining a lot. On the blog you cannot complain much about the politics but you can complain about the environment. You can complain about the corruption and you can complain about the food. The Melanie melamine scandal and those are one for the milk as being like the massive issue on the social network and the government is very serious. Then you have to catch up and you don't catch up decades of standards and and training in a few years. It will come. But I think in those five to 10 years. Okay. Sebastian but are things improving in your view yes things happen slowly saying things are improving slowly. It's massive as I mentioned. You have 1000 factories which are audited out of 4 million. And the issue is also you have several China you have China on the coast where things have been improving a lot and you have China deep and in the food industry because you're talking about the food industry here is very much connected to the farm there on inland . And this is still very very inland. Okay let's talk about how China compares to other countries in Asia. Is it the worst. Is it the biggest defaulter when it comes to this or other countries which have even worse records when it comes to not just food safety but factory safety and you know even talk about somewhere like Bangladesh after that Rana Plaza complex are burning down last year. You have was issue for example in Banda where you have ethical issue in Bangladesh you have a difficult issue in terms of child labor forced labor and infrastructure as we saw this scandal last year as our factory we took the lives of more than a thousand workers. But you have also a lot of issues in doing this show in Bangladesh about slavery. We talk a lot about child labor child labor is about 6 percent for our equality but slavery you know for example the father ise lost at CAC I took care of or whatever game some money and instead of being the money to give his daughter or his children for three months of the factory. You see that a lot. And that all these things that you don't have that in China much less than the then Bangladesh or Indonesia or even even in Vietnam that we we find .

No schedule data available.

48% of Food Tested in China in 2014 Failed: Breteau

AsiaInspection CEO Sebastien Breteau discusses food safety issues in China with Bloomberg's Rishaad Salamat on "On The Move Asia." (Source: Bloomberg)

More From On the Move Asia
All episodes and clips