What You See is What You Get?

My dad decided to make dinner table conversation the other day. It started off about soy sauce, but it was anything but tasty. He had read somewhere that a manufacturing company in China called Hongshuai Soy Sauce was developing a type of soy sauce with alternative ingredients. What was the alternative ingredient? Human hair. I decided to look up any articles corresponding to this story and came to realize that what my dad told me was right! The reason why to use human hair was because it possesses amino acid which is a substance commonly found in soy sauce. But that was just the tip of the unappetizing ice berg. It was revealed that the hair was collected from local salons, barbershops, and hospitals and furthermore, other disgusting waste such as used cotton swabs, used menstrual cycle pads, used siringe, and condoms were incoorporated into that pool of raw materials.

Let’s take a look at this from a strictly profit- generating view. Of course this is genius! This is mundane waste that nobody wants turned into cold hard cash. All the accountants are doing are just monitoring the assets and equity as they go up. Everything is on Cloud Nine until the law comes to burst the bubble. I am all for innovation and profit maximizing tactics, but this story just angers me…and pokes at my curiosity in ways that I don’t want it to venture into. Who comes up with ideas like this and who knew hair could be turned into edible condiments? The bigger question is: who in their right mind would follow through with this evil plan?  

 The techinicians of the company admitted that they would not personally eat this soy sauce because there are plenty of bacteria and micro organisms crawling about. Not knowing what this mysterious alternative ingredient was, the Chinese consumers latched on to the fact that this soy sauce was substantially lower priced compared to the competitors and didn’t taste all that different.

Again, ethics comes into play. Is it ethical to put the consumers’ health at risk to make a quick buck? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. My curiosity: Does the Chinese government really care about such a scandal? With an uncontrolled population number already, can this be seen as a silent weapon to reduce a couple of million here and there? Horrible thought, but how far is it from the truth..?

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