漳州"泡药杨梅"事件：一颗水果背后的产业危机

Today we'll talk about

a piece of news from May.

This news

is about a kind of fruit —

yangmei (bayberry).

Have you eaten yangmei?

It's a fruit very characteristic

of southern China.

Red,

small,

both sweet and sour in flavor.

Every year from May to June

is yangmei's best season.

But yangmei has one trait,

and it is the key to this news:

it cannot be kept long.

After being picked from the tree,

in two or three days

it begins to go bad.

Because it cannot be kept,

selling yangmei becomes very hard.

If the road is long,

the yangmei is ruined;

if it doesn't sell,

the yangmei is also ruined.

So

the farmers who grow yangmei

are under enormous pressure.

For the whole year

they live off these few weeks.

Alright,

the background is done;

let's look at the news.

Around May 15,

CCTV and many media outlets

reported a story.

It happened in Fujian Province,

in Zhangzhou City's

Longhai District.

Specifically two towns:

Fugong Town and Baishui Town.

There are several places there

in the yangmei business.

We call them "procurement points."

A "procurement point"

is a middleman that, from farmers,

buys yangmei

and then sells it on.

The media discovered

that these procurement points

took the yangmei

and soaked it in a chemical liquid.

The "chemical liquid" here

was not actually medicine.

It was two kinds

of food additives.

The first

is called "dehydroacetic acid sodium" (脱氢乙酸钠),

a preservative —

something that keeps food from spoiling.

The second

was a bottle of sweetener —

a chemical that makes things taste sweeter.

And this bottle of sweetener

had no label,

no production date,

and no quality certificate.

Media call this kind of thing

a "three-no product" (三无产品).

According to state regulations,

both of these additives

are not allowed

to be used on fresh fruit.

So

what these procurement points did

was illegal.

As soon as the news came out,

the authorities reacted very fast.

On May 20

and 21,

Zhangzhou City issued

an official notice.

The notice said:

the confirmed

problem procurement points

were five in all.

On site,

225 kg of problem yangmei was seized,

along with more than 20 kg of additives.

And from the market,

540 kg was also recovered.

In the end:

twelve cases were filed,

five people were criminally detained.

"Criminal detention"

means the kind of handling that can land you in prison.

This matter

was handled fairly quickly.

But

the real trouble

was just beginning.

As soon as the news broke,

the whole yangmei market

collapsed.

In those days,

the whole country was saying:

"Yangmei has a problem.

"Don't buy it for now.

Think about it —

this was supposed to be yangmei's

most profitable few weeks.

Now, suddenly,

no one dares to buy.

Many livestream sellers

of yangmei

were notified of "illegal selling"

and had to refund consumers.

What hurts more is this:

those affected

were not only Zhangzhou.

Zhejiang also has lots of yangmei.

And Zhejiang yangmei

is more famous,

and had never had

this kind of problem at all.

But consumers,

seeing yangmei, were afraid;

they could not tell

which one was from Zhangzhou

and which from Zhejiang.

The result —

Zhejiang fruit farmers

also could not sell.

On May 23,

a Zhangzhou fruit farmer

was livestreaming online.

As he sold yangmei,

he cried.

He said

his family had grown yangmei for decades

and had never used 药水 (chemical liquid).

But because of this news,

all his yangmei

was stuck in his hands.

This video

made many people sad.

Speaking of this,

I want to share

a thought of my own.

What this matter

most makes one ask is:

why did it happen?

Why did the procurement points

take the risk

to use illegal additives?

The answer,

in fact, is related to yangmei

itself.

Yangmei's shelf life

is too short.

Two or three days and it's bad.

For procurement points

and people who transport it,

this is

a huge problem.

Illegal additives

can let the yangmei

last a few more days.

And the money

can be a bit more, too.

So this temptation

has always been there.

But illegal is illegal.

To earn a few more days' money

by making consumers eat unsafe things —

that is absolutely not okay.

More importantly,

this case teaches us:

in business,

the most valuable thing

is not the goods —

it's "trust."

A market's trust,

to build it,

takes many years;

to lose it

can take just

a few bad people.

And once trust is gone,

everyone is hurt —

including those

who did nothing wrong.

Finally I ask you:

when you buy things,

what do you care about the most?

Is it cheap?

Is it good-looking?

Or

whether you trust

the one selling?

Think about it.

Okay.

That's all for today.

Talk tomorrow.