China’s Tsingtao brewery says worker who urinated in malt container has been detained by security authorities

BEIJING, CHINA: China’s Tsingtao brewery announced on Wednesday (1 Nov) that a worker who was captured on video urinating in a malt container has been detained by security authorities.

This incident, which occurred on 19 Oct at a Tsingtao factory in Pingdu, Shandong province, has garnered widespread attention and raised concerns about food safety standards in China.

The Pingdu government’s investigation team confirmed the detention of the worker on 22 Oct, citing intentional damage to company property as the reason for the detainment.

The worker’s act of urinating into a malt container, which had recently been emptied, was captured on a dashcam and subsequently uploaded to the Douyin platform, China’s equivalent of TikTok.

In response to the incident, authorities took swift action by sealing all malt affected by the contamination and removing it from the production process.

This measure aimed to prevent any potentially compromised raw materials from reaching consumers.

Tsingtao Brewery, one of China’s leading breweries, has responded to the incident by announcing measures to address the situation and strengthen the management of raw material transportation.

These measures include fully enclosing trucks to prevent contact between personnel and raw materials and introducing a “behavior recognition monitoring system” powered by artificial intelligence within the factory.

While the statements from Tsingtao and the local government have been widely discussed on the microblogging platform Weibo, some users have expressed doubt about the extent to which the company’s brand can recover from the damage caused by this incident.

“This (incident) has done too much harm to Tsingtao,” one user wrote.

“Food and beverage companies should find ways to manage the entire process (of production), otherwise a drop of urine can ruin a company.”