Risk management of Chinese food companies; a management perspective

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development in China: Current Status and Future Perspectives

“…Despite the 2009 Food Safety law, there are still numerous food safety incidents around China, such as gutter oil, dyed green beans, adulterated noodles, contaminated strawberries, fake beef, and pork meat scandals. In spring 2013, around 14,000 dead pigs were found floating on the Huangpu River in Shanghai, and yet the officials claimed that water from the river was safe for humans to use [14]. In June 2015, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the authorities had seized nearly half a billion dollars' worth of smuggled frozen meat and some of the meat dated to the 1970s.…”

“…Facing the challenges discussed above, China has a long way to go in achieving sustainability. In addition to tightening its legislation system, it has, for some time, been recognised that China must encourage CSR to curb its social and environmental problems and the corruption of government officials [14,54,61,62]. However, can CSR in China help address such complex issues of income inequality, poverty, and environmental degradation?…”

“…A global survey by Cone communication [10], a public relations and marketing agency, suggested that 90% of consumers would boycott a company if they learned of its irresponsible behaviour and 93% of those surveyed wanted to see more CSR in the products and services they purchased. Various academic studies have also highlighted the increasing consumer preference for products and services with socially responsible attributes [11][12][13][14]. In addition, employees are increasingly putting pressure on employers to engage in CSR.…”

Motives for Corporate Social Responsibility in Chinese Food Companies

“…This controversy indicates the complexity of the food safety control in China. Lam et al [12] and Zhang et al [19] has pointed out that the huge scale of China's food industry and sheer size of the food sector have limited the progress of food safety legislation and regulation, which has made it difficult to uphold high safety standards across the vast diversity of food products, and has indeed presented a significant challenge. There obviously is a need for a more comprehensive regulation and inspection system for Chinese food industry, which should include different assessment and inspection tools, and different training and support programme for companies with different sizes.…”

“…Zhou et al [18] also found that the firm's size (measured by annual sales), whether or not an international quality system was being implemented and their orientation towards export affected the implementation of self-inspection systems in the aquatic industry in Zhejiang. Zhang et al [19] found that not only the company size, but also the level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement of the food company, is related to its willingness to effectively implement food safety measures and minimize food safety risks.…”