Food safety sharpens China’s appetite for M&A

China’s drive to improve food safety via foreign acquisitions faces growing anti-trust barriers and management failures. FinanceAsia talks to deal-makers about how to make the recipe just right.
Pigs float down Shanghai river in 2013
Pigs float down Shanghai river in 2013

China’s top policy planner told local food companies on January 11 they should fan out and acquire foreign food processing technology and penetrate the global food supply chain they are rushing to comply.

“There are not many local name brands that consumers trust,” the National Development and Reform Commission NDRC damningly said in an online statement released on January 11. 

This latest fillip by regulators is part of China’s long-running campaign to overhaul the country’s dire food safety record after local firms were caught selling infant milk formula adulterated with melamine that sickened around 300,000 children in 2008 and regularly distributing gutter oil  ...

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