中国开发出家用食品安全检测工具
Coming Soon to China: At-Home Toxic Food Test Kits
中国的消费者将不必担心不小心吃到硬纸板馅的包子或有毒鸡肉了，他们将很快可以在用餐之前自行对食品进行安全检测。
Fearful of accidentally chomping down on cardboard-stuffed dumplings or toxic chicken, Chinese consumers may soon be able to run safety tests on their food before putting it in their mouths.
根据中国官方媒体新华社的报道，中国北方的天津科技大学开发了一种在家中检测食品安全的工具，该工具可以检测出超过60种化学物质。
According to a report from the official Xinhua news agency, scientists at the Tianjin University of Science and Technology in northern China have developed an at-home testing kit to help consumers detect more than 60 varieties of chemicals in their food.
新华社报道说，通过检测试纸，消费者可以在几分钟内知道食物样本中是否含有有害物质，预计这一产品将有较高需求。
The tests, conducted with indicator paper, let consumers know within minutes if a food sample contains harmful substances, Xinhua said, predicting the product will likely be in high demand.
由于新闻中曝出的大量食品安全丑闻，比如含有激素的肉类和因膨大剂而爆炸的西瓜，中国消费者最近几年几乎患上食品质安全恐惧症。
With countless scandals ─ from hormone-infused meat to exploding watermelons ─ appearing in the news day-after-day,
Chinese consumers have developed healthy fears over the quality of their food in recent years.
最令人震惊的食品安全丑闻发生在2008年，当时，添加了工业化学品三聚氰胺的奶制品导致六名婴儿死亡，大约30万婴儿患病。
One of the most jarring incidents occurred in 2008, when dairy products adulterated with the industrial chemical melamine led to the deaths of six infants and made around 300,000 others ill.
爆出食品安全丑闻的大多数都是国产品牌，这促成了中国消费者对外国品牌的偏爱，以及高端食品超市的涌现，比如华润创业有限公司(China Resources Enterprise Ltd.)旗下的Ole，这家超市的大部分商品都是进口的。
Most of China’s food safety scandals have been associated with domestic products, which has led to a growing preference for foreign brands and fueled the emergence of premium grocery stores like China Resources Enterprise Ltd.’s Ole that import a majority of what they sell.
然而最近，即使是外国品牌也出现了食品安全问题。去年年末，百胜集团(Yum Brands Inc.)旗下快餐连锁店肯德基(KFC)销售的鸡肉被指抗生素超标，在中国社交媒体上引起轩然大波，也影响了肯德基的销量。
Yet recently even the safety of foreign brands has come into question. Chicken sold by Yum Brands Inc.’s KFC was alleged late last year to have contained higher than acceptable levels of antibiotics, causing an uproar on China’s social media sites and affecting KFC’s sales.
检测结果显示，2010和2011年肯德基送检的19批鸡肉中，有8批抗生素含量超标。上海的食品安全监管机构去年12月末说，该机构正在调查百胜是否对检测结果采取了适当的应对措施。百胜集团的一名发言人说，公司在得知上海监管机构的监测结果后立即联系旗下餐厅，撤回了相关鸡肉产品，并将这些鸡肉进行销毁。
Shanghai ‘s food-safety regulator said in late December it was investigating whether Yum responded appropriately to test results that had shown eight out of 19 batches of chicken samples Yum sent to labs for testing in 2010 and 2011 had high levels of antibiotics. A spokesman for Yum said as soon as the company learned of the Shanghai watchdog’s test results, it immediately contacted restaurants, removed the chicken from outlets and destroyed it.
新华社报道说，食品检验一般在实验室进行，但是天津的研究人员认为，消费者更愿意自己对食品进行检验。新华社没有提到这些试纸何时将会面市以及试纸的价格。
Food testing has typically been done in labs, but researchers in Tianjin believe consumers would prefer to take control of testing themselves, the Xinhua report said. It did not say when the testing strips might be released or how much they would cost.
还有一些机构也曾尝试让消费者拥有远离受污染食品的能力。国际商业机器公司(IBM)在北京的研究人员开发了一款移动应用程序，这款程序可以通过条形码向用户提供在杂货店所看到食品的安全等级，此外，这款程序还能帮助企业监控运输和制造过程中的污染隐患。
Others have attempted to empower consumers to protect themselves from contaminated food. IBM researchers in Beijing have developed a mobile application that uses barcodes to provide users with safety ratings for food items they find in the grocery store and helps companies monitor contamination pitfalls during transportation and manufacturing.
尽管美国和其他地区已经出现了不少家用的食品安全检测产品，这些产品的功能并不全面，它们只能检测单一的污染物，比如沙门氏菌或者大肠杆菌。考虑到中国消费者面临的食品安全丑闻的规模和种类，这种单一的监测方法不太可能令中国的消费者满意。
While many at-home food safety testing products already exist in the U.S. and elsewhere, they are not comprehensive, testing only for single contaminants such as salmonella or e-coli. Given the number and variety of food scandals they’ve faced, Chinese consumers aren’t likely to be satisfied with a single-serving test.
WSJ
2013-02-19
WSJ
506次
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