Chinese consumers deal with fake eggs

Chinese counterfeit artists are going to new lengths in their hunt for riches: fake eggs.

That’s right. Counterfeiters are now designing and manufacturing eggshells filled with something manmade. And that’s no yolk. In some cases, it’s proven downright dangerous.

While US consumers have experienced dangerous products coming out of China -- lead-based toys, weak steel, and toxic toothpaste -- the domestic Chinese market has much more to fear from counterfeiters. In China, everything from soy sauce to baby food to medicine are counterfeited using cheap, dubious materials that can lead to long-term health problems in the best-case scenario and death in the worst.

"These days I have no hope of getting my hands on fresh, organic eggs," said a netizen named HanMa on Xian's Mama-Network forum. "But is it too much to ask for eggs that are laid by a healthy, living chicken?"

In the case of fake eggs, the eggshells, whites and yolks are made from industrial and commercial chemicals including alginic acid, potassium alum, gelatin, calcium chloride and calcium carbonate. Research in China has indicated that long-term consumption of fake eggs can lead to memory loss or dementia, among other health issues that cannot be determined until a few years down the road.

Consumers all over the nation are aware of the problem and tips on how to identify fake eggs and where they have been found are listed on informational sites such as 18dao.com and Netease.cn. Nevertheless, fake products are rampant in the Chinese market and are, if anything, increasing.

Fake eggs cropped up a few years ago in poor and isolated provinces like Henan, parts of Shandong and Hunan, but soon spread across the nation. One person can manufacture between 1500 - 2000 fake eggs per day with an estimated profit of about $70 per day, which is a large sum of money for poor farmers and workers in China. To put things in perspective, a small one-room apartment on the outskirts of a large city -- where most migrant workers live -- costs about $70 per month. This type of money and the ease of manufacturing has given rise to an even more lucrative side enterprise: instruction manuals and courses, themselves often fake.

There are hundreds of ads on the web in China offering tutoring services, manuals and equipment for the would-be counterfeiter. A full-spectrum course can run $80 to $120. One brazen "master" in Shandong bragged to a reporter for the Qilu Evening News that he had taught thousands of students in every province in the nation.

The ads are readily accessible to anyone who can read Chinese and they often include a cell phone number and a QQ chat number. So far, there has been little public response from the authorities -- individual citizens posting their experiences, pictures and videos on the web are currently the strongest and most effective response.

On December 16, 2009, the Xining municipal government in Qinghai Province organized an inspection of the entire city, to determine whether or not there were fake eggs in the market. According to an announcement they made two days later, after inspecting 480 enterprises, they found no fake eggs.

But in May of 2009, the Head of the Food and Drug Institute at Hunan Agricultural University, Xia Yan Bing told reporters from the Beijing Science News, "There probably are fake eggs in the marketplace -- from the outside they are very difficult to tell apart from real eggs, but once opened, the difference becomes apparent."

An official from Hunan responded by offering RMB1000 to anyone who could bring him a fake egg. So far, the officials have yet to confirm or act upon the reports of fake eggs.

With all of the misinformation and confusion on the web about fake eggs, experts in Hunan urged the central government to "provide a clear answer as to whether or not fake eggs are in the marketplace."

China's rapid development has transformed much of the countryside into "suburbs" of mega-cities, uprooting whole communities in the process. These communities once relied on farming for their livelihoods and are now force to find menial labor in the cities to finance the growing expenses of their urbanizing environment.

Along with the pressures of day-to-day living, many of the "newly urbanized" lack the education and skills to advance in society. Some of these struggling masses are turning to cheap yet lucrative schemes, such as fake eggs, watered down soybean oil and a host of others to make ends meet.

Recent price hikes beginning last November might exacerbate the problem further: basic amenities like oil, pork, beef, rice and eggs have grown more and more expensive as China's currency reacts to the aftershocks of America's credit crisis.

In a telling ad, the "company" offering training in the manufacture of fake eggs specifically mentions level of education:

Our company offers the following obvious benefits:

1) Similarity to Real Eggs Much Greater: not just the shell, but also the yolk, the white, the surface of the egg and the consistency display no difference to the real thing … can be placed along real eggs in the marketplace …

2) Easy Method: Required level of education very low

3) Much Lower Cost of Goods: Only need six different ingredients … cost aprox. 0.05RMB – 0.08RMB

4) Much more versatile: Can be used to manufacture goose eggs, pigeon eggs as well as single and double yolks

There are also ads that advertise fake chicken, fake beef and fake eggs in the same breath. Even more frightening is the claim that their eggs "can be placed alongside real eggs in the marketplace."

The skills of the counterfeiters are indeed refined enough to fool most anyone, but consumers in China are accustomed to the dangers of fake, counterfeit,and downright deadly goods being sold in their markets and shopping centers. For the Chinese, inspecting a product thoroughly is just common sense. In fact, the demand for safe goods from a growing middle class in China is helping to spur growth in locally grown organic produce, foreign grocery stores, imported goods and a vibrant, investigative Internet community.

Although consumers in other countries might consider themselves shielded from many of the dangers that Chinese deal with on a daily basis, with the world economy bringing markets ever closer together, the mantra for every shopper should still be Buyer Beware.