the country has 500,000 food production and processing companies,70% of which have fewer than 10 employees -- made it very difficult for authorities to control and foreign buyers to understand.
,Almost half of Chinese food-processing plants fail to meet internationally acceptable standards, new figures suggest.Quality control specialist AsiaInspection said 48% of the "several thousand" inspections, audits and tests it conducted in China last year failed to meet the requirements stipulated by some of its clients -- Western food trading companies and retailers
There are horror stories, obviously," Mathieu Labasse, AsiaInspection's vice president told CNN by phone. "We find factories that just have no basic idea about hygiene standards. People that handle the food, they have no gloves, nothing.