Foul air? ‘Blame it on the bacon ...’
Print Edition
WHILE experts point to car emissions and construction work for China’s foul air, one government official in southwest China lays the blame on people making smoked bacon.
Dazhou in Sichuan Province has suffered from heavy smog since the beginning of the year, with the PM2.5 reading frequently exceeding healthy levels.
Rao Bing, deputy head of the city’s Environment Protection Bureau, says one of the causes is smoking bacon.
Almost every household traditionally makes smoked bacon before the Chinese lunar new year, which is on February 19.
Local chengguan, the urban management enforcers, have started to raid and demolish meat-smoking sites.
Public ridicule and skepticism greeted Rao’s statement after it found its way online.
On Sina Weibo, the official’s argument was mocked by comments that Dazhou’s air might “smell like smoked bacon.”
“Smoking bacon has a long history, but smog does not,” was one comment.
Smoking meat does contribute to air pollution, but only to a small degree, according to volunteers at the Bayu Public Welfare Development Center, a non-government environmental protection organization which conducted a 3-day survey at a dozen bacon-smoking sites. “The impact of the smoking process is confined within a 50-meter radius,” a volunteer told the Chongqing Evening News.
It is not the first time Chinese government officials have suggested controversial explanations for smog.
In October, environmental watchdogs in Beijing and the adjacent Henan Province, two severely polluted places, blamed the smog on farmers burning straw, a common practice in agriculture.
Reports of heavy smog posing health hazards have proliferated in recent years despite a measures to contain air pollution that include restricting industrial production and vehicle use.
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