Original subtitles

China is an agricultural juggernaut.

Its farms produce a quarter of the world's corn,

a third of the world's fruit and half the world's pork.

No matter what you eat,

at least one ingredient could have come from China.

But what if these ingredients were not what you assumed?

And what if you were not just poisoning yourself,

but poisoning your children as well?

Mrs Zhou, is mother to 5-year-old boy.

When he was less than a year old,

he was stricken with a mysterious illness.

Then, in September 2008,

officials announced that 14 babies from Gansu province...

...had fallen ill with kidney problems.

They all had one thing in common.

They drank the Sanlu brand of powdered milk,

the same brand of milk that Mrs Zhou had been feeding her son.

It was a case of tainted milk...

...that would eventually lead to over 50,000 hospitalizations.

A month before the scandal broke,

tests already showed that Sanlu's milk powder was tainted.

But the product stayed on the shelves.

Sanlu even allegedly bribed Baidu,

China's number one search engine to bury the negative news.

Only when Fonterra,

a New Zealand company with a 43 percent stake in Sanlu,

alerted Beijing in mid-September was the case blown wide open.

Parents like Mrs Zhou realise...

...they had been unknowingly poisoning their children...

...with tainted Sanlu milk.

On December 31st 2008,

four Sanlu executives went on trial...

...for producing and selling tainted milk.

Tian Wenhua, General Manager of Sanlu, pleaded guilty.

She received a life sentence.

Deputy General Manager, Wang Yuliang,

who had previously attempted suicide by leaping off a building,

was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

But that wasn't the end of the matter.

Police were about to discover a network...

...that threatened the entire country's milk supply...

...and its exports across the world.

The raw milk used to produce milk powder is sourced from dairy farmers.

To ensure quality, companies like Sanlu only purchase milk...

...that contains a high enough level of protein.

But there wasn't enough such milk on the market.

With the price of animal feed rising,

farmers were feeding their cows low-quality feed.

The cows in turn produced milk with insufficient protein content.

Somewhere between the farmers and the companies,

someone had falsified the protein levels by adding the chemical melamine.

Melamine is a chemical used in the manufacture...

...of plastics, floor tiles and whiteboards.

When ingested, it can cause kidney stones, kidney failure,

and even death.

Sanlu's milk contained...

...more than 2,500 times the acceptable amount.

Investigations led police to the middlemen...

...who bought milk from farmers, added melamine,

then sold it to the big buyers at a higher price.

Several middlemen were arrested.

One, Geng Jinping,

was sentenced to death for selling milk-containing melamine.

And Zhang Yujun, who had sold melamine to middlemen,

was also sentenced to death.

Tests eventually found 70 contaminated products...

...from 20 different companies.

At least 25 countries quickly banned Chinese dairy products.

In China, victims were promised compensation,

but even legal action did not always work.

Mrs Zhou's son drank Sanlu's tainted milk for nearly a year,

and still suffers the effects of melamine poisoning.

Mrs Zhou still brings her son for regular check-ups...

...as doctors continue to monitor her son's damaged kidneys.

Since the melamine milk scandal,

China has taken steps to improve the quality of its milk.

But could the problem have gone beyond just one product?

Could it have extended to the very heart of the health authorities themselves?

China has seen several incidents of cunningly forged food,

including rat masquerading as mutton, pork and paraffin sold as beef,

and urine-soaked duck posing as lamb.

With vendors greedy for sales and buyers hungry for a bargain,

the country's regulators have to carefully check what's being sold.

But what if the regulators themselves are in on the act?

In 1998,

China created the State Food and Drug Administration...

...to regulate food and drug safety.

The agency investigated food scandals and approved the sale of new drugs.

For eight years, the agency was run by Zheng Xiaoyu.

But in 2005, he quietly stepped down.

Rumour had it...

...that he was under investigation for corruption.

During his time as the head of China's Food and Drug Administration,

Zheng accepted 850,000 dollars worth of gifts from drug companies.

In turn, he ordered the approvals of over 150,000 new medicines,

over a hundred times more...

...than America's Food and Drug Administration.

Some medicines turned out to be unsafe,

with one antibiotic resulting in 14 deaths...

...and hundreds of serious illnesses.

China's leadership,

keen to show its determination in improving food and drug safety,

sentenced Zheng to death in 2007.

China has seen numerous food scandals.

Some involve passing a cheap ingredient off...

...as a more expensive one.

Others involve using chemicals...

...to make a sub-quality ingredient look more appealing.

But there is another type of scandal that sounds so incredible.

Many people believe that it's nothing more than an urban legend,

creating fake food from scratch,

out of a mixture of artificial ingredients.

For years, Chinese media has reported the existence of fake eggs,

some manufacturers producing as many as 1,500 per day.

Sold on the street,

each egg is offered for about 6 cents cheaper than the real deal.

It is said that sellers can make 70 dollars a day,

double the country's average wage.

Several have dismissed these claims as a hoax.

But there is at least one person...

...who believes he has been conned by fake eggs...

...and lived to tell the tale.

After two years of this regular breakfast,

Huang Hui began to get frequent stomach aches.

Unable to bear the pain, he visited a doctor.

Upon studying Huang's food habits, the doctor narrowed it down to the eggs.

Reportedly, a fake egg can be made in less than five minutes.

The main ingredient of both the white and the yolk...

...is Sodium Alginate,

a thickening agent used in the production of syrup.

Yolks are formed by adding yellow food colouring,

then dropping the mixture into calcium chloride.

A transparent casing forms, holding the fake yolk liquid in a ball.

A coating of calcium carbonate,

which is actually the main component of real eggshells,

completes the illusion.

Using a mould to form the shape,

you have a synthetic egg,

without a chicken in sight.

Real eggshells have a layer of membrane on the interior,

but fake eggshells do not.

Fake eggs have a chemical odour.

Crack the eggs open, and a real egg...

...will have distinctly separated yolk and white.

In a fake egg, the yolk and white mix together.

With his health seriously jeopardized,

Huang had to undergo surgery to have the gallstone removed.

He also filed a complaint with the Food and Drug Administration...

...to shut the shop down.

Poisonous milk.

Fake eggs.

Dangerous food whose cheap pricing attracts unsuspecting buyers.

But paying more is no guarantee of safety.

Buying expensive luxury products...

...can just mean a larger profit margin for food forgers...

...and an equally high cost to health.

China is now one of the world's biggest wine consumers,

consuming over one and a half billion bottles of wine per year.

It's the imported wines, especially from France,

that are seen as prestigious.

In 2012 alone,

China imported over 250 million liters of wine from the European Union,

nearly 1 billion dollars' worth.

Wine counterfeiters are looking for a slice of that pie.

Lin used to work in the fake wine industry as a salesperson.

Salespeople target people like Wang,

the owner of a small pub in Beijing.

On many occasions, he's been offered fake wines by suppliers,

which come with the temptation of a high profit margin.

Part of what can make fake wine so convincing...

...is the genuine packaging it comes in.

Get the right empty bottle, refill it with cheap wine...

...and you can make a quick counterfeit buck.

Chateau Lafite has become the poster child for wine forgery.

A bottle of Lafite from 1982,

considered one of the greatest vintages of the 20th century,

can cost more than 10,000 dollars.

Aficionados say there are more cases of 1982 Lafite in China...

...than were actually produced by the French chateau itself that year.

Clearly, something doesn't add up!

Zhang Hong Hai has been in the wine business...

...for more than 20 years.

He started importing and selling wine in China in 2005.

The Chinese wine market is considered young...

...and full of inexperienced drinkers.

That, coupled with Chinese fondness for expensive labels,

makes it easier for wine forgers to ply their trade.

A consumer who pays top dollar for cheap wine...

...in an expensive bottle can count himself lucky.

Sometimes what's in the bottle isn't even wine at all.

Excessive methanol intake can lead to insomnia, blindness, and even death.

Bob is a social drinker of wine and spirits.

After a night out with friends drinking wine,

he found himself in the hospital with a damaged throat membrane.

Elite winemakers are fighting back,

by smashing or buying back empty bottles.

Unethical manufacturers.

Ingenious conmen.

And corruption at the top of the health and safety watchdog.

China has declared food safety and national priority.

But with 200 million farms,

450,000 food-processing companies...

...and fewer than one food inspector to every 10,000 people,

it seems the potential profits from food scamming....

...are still more enticing than the odds of getting caught.