The first step is admitting you have a probem

This link was passed on by Doug Powell of K-State's Food Safety Network, and it speaks to the newly found public relations sensibilities among China's food safety officials.


From Australia's Online Opinion:

With a public relations scandal looming if not already roiling for China on June 12, 2007, Li Dongsheng, the Vice Minister for the State Administration for Industry and Commerce in China, told reporters in China that China had developed “very good, very complete methods” to regulate product safety.
“We can guarantee food safety,” Vice Minister Li Dongsheng concluded. China demonstrated, by that statement and many similar denials and public announcements, that it “didn’t get it”. China doesn’t know what almost every experienced American movie star, politician and prominent sports figure know: as soon as a scandal breaks - come clean. Noted public relations and crisis management professional Jonathan Bernstein wrote in an article written for Bernstein Communications, “the role of public relations … is to help stabilise that environment by developing messages and public relations strategy which results in prompt, honest, informative and concerned communication with all important audiences - internal and external”.
Today, after months of further developments in the scandal, the official China news agency Xinhua quoted the deputy head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Hui Lusheng, as saying, “At present, the food safety situation has improved, yet is still serious”.

TK: Perhaps China's food safety officials can garner a little more PR favor by entering rehab - rehab for autocratic, dictatorial and out of touch bureaucrats. The last head of food safety oversight in China was executed; perhaps those in charge now see the value of lowering expectations.