[Fight Club soap made of human fat]
The recent outbreak of pet food scandal has raised some reactions from bloggers. The source of the problematic pet food seems confirmed to be China. The victims, the Americans, may simply be surprised by the ‘open secret’ in China, block all the import, and blame China ‘where people don’t care about life’ for ‘poisoning the world’. As a mainland Chinese, however, I cannot likewise stay away from the issue. Certainly there is much to discuss in terms of institution, policy, laws and regulation, morality, etc. about this scandal, but from a scientific point of view, I also see a twist of science literacy in China: the chemistry knowledge of the general public is lower than any reasonable minimum, while a spoonful of manufacturers are ‘clever’ enough to acquire complex while effective chemical tricks to play in their production.

Technology is not always staying with industry. The manufacturers must resort to experts for it, where they have shown great creativity: using alternative protein source (hair) for soy sauce, alternative hydrocarbon source (sewage) for lard, and even cheating protein test with a nitrogen rich and stable alternative (melamine). This is far beyond the level of science literacy of the public. So who help them through these? Scientists of course.

Many scientists in China are fond of enterprise projects. The research group I am currently working in received a joint project with a down product company, to convert the keratin in the down residue into soluble and processable protein for wider application. It is a big money; I am talking about several million yuan for this single (and relatively easy) project. Possibly some research groups were asked to find an alternative source of protein for soy sauce or lard or wheat gluten, and there they were, with huge financial incomes (which may mean a new ATM, a new NMR, or even a new building).

Seldom, however, am I told that a research group is found responsible, if not criminal, for providing technical support for illegal production in any news discovery of fake commodity. Certainly, the melamine-to-cheat-protein-test idea is also easy practically – just blend it in – but some others are not, like the hair-to-soy-sauce one, which involve the protocol to break down the hair into amino acid and the subsequent separation and purification (if any) process. Who is responsible for the technical part of the guilty?

In the 1999 movie Fight Club Tayler Durden boldly expand his human-fat-to-soap business into a huge systematic armed organization. To destroy him, however, only the courage to face the fact is needed. The Chinese government may also need a little courage to stop the growing project Mayhem of fake commodity now.