In May 2026, Fugong Town and Baishui Town in Longhai District, Zhangzhou, Fujian—core production areas for early-maturing yangmei in China—became deeply embroiled in a food safety controversy due to an illegal additive incident. As the origin of the nationally recognized geographical indication product "Fugong Yangmei," the area boasts a specialty agricultural industry chain worth billions of yuan, sustaining the livelihoods of 30,000 fruit farmers year-round. In mid-month, Fujian Radio and Television's "First Gang Gang Tuan" teamed up with China Food magazine to conduct an undercover investigation. Reporters disguised themselves as buyers and went deep into more than ten purchasing points in production areas to capture shocking violations: freshly picked bayberries were directly thrown into plastic chemical tanks, soaked for three to five minutes, then sealed for export and openly labeled as "natural and pollution-free" for sale, mainly to Shanghai, Jiaxing, and other places. Upon investigation, the soaking liquid contained two types of prohibited substances: one is sodium dehydroacetate, a preservative explicitly banned by the state for fresh fruit and used to extend the storage and transportation cycle of fruit; The second is an unqualified sweetener with a sweetness as high as 8,000 times that of sucrose. This material has no production license, no quality standards, and no inspection reports, making it a typical illegal additive. During the undercover inspection, industry insiders bluntly stated that they never eat medicinal fruit themselves, and that purchasing merchants commonly use methods such as "keeping samples for inspection and selling medicinal fruits" to evade supervision. This long-standing and tacit industry rule has been fully exposed. On May 15, the video of the undercover investigation was publicly released. #药水杨梅#话题迅速冲上热搜, public opinion quickly fermented, directly triggering nationwide anxiety over fruit safety.

After the public opinion erupted, Zhangzhou quickly activated the food safety emergency response plan, coordinating with market supervision, public security, agriculture and rural affairs, and other departments to form a special task force to carry out comprehensive inspections, traceability and accountability, and concentrated rectification. Law enforcement agencies seized 225 kilograms of problematic bayberries on the spot. As of May 20, a total of 540 kilograms of problematic bayberries had been recovered, 20.1 kilograms of illegal additives were seized, 12 administrative cases and 2 criminal cases were filed, five core involved individuals were criminally detained, and all illegal fruits and additives were harmlessly destroyed. The local government simultaneously launched a 45-day special rectification campaign, implementing regulatory systems such as cadre on-site deployment, external transport reporting, and blacklist control. All 639 batches of yangmei were later randomly inspected and passed inspections. However, once market trust collapses, it becomes difficult to quickly restore it through administrative remedies. Negative public opinion triggers a violent chain reaction: supermarkets in multiple provinces and cities across the country urgently removed and banned the sale of Fujian Zhangzhou bayberries, large buyers have completely stopped buying, market circulation channels are nearly severed, and only a few small and medium buyers make sporadic purchases, resulting in negligible transaction volumes. The purchase price in production areas dropped sharply from 35 yuan per jin before the market to 1 yuan per jin. Even with low selling prices, sales remained severely unsold. Many ripe yangmei were left unpicked, with rotten branches. Fruit farmers faced the difficult situation of "picking but no one wanting them, not picking but rotting in the ground." Some farmers had no choice but to cut down peak fruit trees to reduce ongoing losses. The direct economic loss from this incident is estimated at 120 million yuan. In the midst of industry crisis, Zeng Xinggui, president of the Fujian Bayberry Association, publicly urged the market to be tolerant, urging society not to kill all farmers outright, and to preserve the survival space for compliant growers. However, this plea did not gain public sympathy; instead, it drew widespread skepticism from netizens across the internet. Public opinion generally holds that when industry chaos emerges, the industry collectively loses its voice, and only after the industry's reputation collapses does it publicly plead for mercy, making it difficult for consumers to accept such demands.

In this trust crisis triggered by unscrupulous merchants and borne by all production areas, whether farmers are wronged has become the core conflict of public debate. Objectively speaking, ordinary farmers work diligently during production without directly engaging in illegal activities such as chemical soaking or illegal mixing. Amid plummeting prices, cut off channels, and a poor fruit market, they bear real economic losses. From a moral standpoint, the grievances of innocent farmers are real. But the general refusal of the public to empathize and pay the bill essentially stems from an unavoidable truth about the industry: local farmers are not unaware, but have long been aware, collectively silent, and voluntarily acquiescence. Bayberries have a short shelf life and are difficult to store and transport. Soaking in medicinal solutions has long been an open industry unspoken rule in production areas. Farmers who are involved in the industry chain year-round are well aware of illegal dosing and preservative soaking at purchase points, and understand the industry consensus that "soaking medicinal products is not the fruit of one's own consumption." While unscrupulous vendors rely on illegal means to earn huge profits, most farmers choose to turn a blind eye and remain silent in order to successfully export their fruit and raise purchase prices. No one proactively exposes industry scandals or eliminates internal bad apples, allowing the gray industry chain to grow unchecked for a long time. This tacit approval of indifferent business and indulgence in profit-driven compromise have allowed industry problems to accumulate, eventually evolving into a food trust crisis that exploded across the internet.

More bluntly, consumers' resistance is the most simple and rational self-protection. Ordinary consumers do not have the ability to identify professionally, cannot distinguish whether each bayberry has been soaked in potion, and is not obliged to bear the cost of screening for the chaos of the place of origin. In the face of fresh fruits of dubious origin, the simplest and most direct way for ordinary people to avoid risks is to avoid the whole and stay away from the production area, which is instinctive self-protection. Consumers never regard compliant fruit farmers, black-hearted vendors, and exposed media as antagonists, and the public clearly understands that the real enemy is illegal vendors who add illegally and ignore health. It is regrettable that when the industry is still profitable and the chaos has not yet been exposed, no one in the production area has always taken the initiative to cut off bad merchants, and no one has taken the initiative to purify the environment of the production area; It was not until word of mouth collapsed, orders were cut in half, and sales channels were cut off that industry associations and farmers came forward to cry about losses and beg for survival. This logic of "collective silence when profitable, and all employees cry out for grievances when there is an accident" cannot gain public understanding, let alone persuade consumers to relax their vigilance.

The negative impact of this incident has already broken through geographical restrictions and evolved into a national bayberry category trust stampede, and the compliant bayberry that has nothing to do with the production area has also encountered a cold reception in the market, with declining sales and sluggish transactions, and the credibility of the entire fresh fruit industry has been overdrawn again. It must be clearly emphasized that food safety is an insurmountable rigid red line, and compassion cannot override public health. It is true that a one-size-fits-all market boycott will accidentally injure compliant farmers and cause innocent people to suffer joint losses, but this pain is the price that must be paid for the rectification of the deformed industrial ecology. The geographical indication signboard of a place relies on the joint maintenance of all practitioners, and cannot only share dividends and not share responsibilities; We cannot be silent and tolerant when chaos breeds, and pray for tolerance after the collapse of word-of-mouth. If the production area is always unwilling to take the initiative to eliminate the black sheep, is unwilling to thoroughly self-examine and self-correct, blindly cries about losses, complains about consumers being unkind, and shifts the consequences of their own lack of control to public indifference, then the tragedy of farmers is difficult to empathize with, and the plight of the industry is not worthy of sympathy. In essence, the consequences of the current unsalable collapse and price collapse are not deliberately targeted by consumers, but the market backlash that will inevitably usher in after the industry has connived at chaos for a long time.

If you want to truly save the market and reshape your reputation, it is meaningless to rely on pleading and selling misery and winning sympathy. At present, the most important thing for the production area to do is not to beg consumers to show mercy, but to take the initiative to scrape bones and treat poison and completely innovate themselves. At the regulatory level, it is necessary to abandon a gust of wind rectification, consolidate normalized regulatory responsibilities, build a full-chain traceability system, severely crack down on illegal additions, sample counterfeiting and other illegal acts, increase illegal costs, and cut off the black interest chain from the source; At the industrial level, it is necessary to take the initiative to clean up the portal, strictly investigate and deal with illegal acquisition of merchants, publicly destroy problematic fruits, and make integrity commitments to the people of the whole country in a transparent, open and hard-core rectification manner; Farmers should break the psychology of luck and bystander thinking, abandon the attitude of ignoring matters, take the initiative to resist illegal transactions, supervise industry chaos, and completely cut off the gray industrial chain. Only when the place of origin itself proves the safety of the fruit and the integrity of the industry can it be qualified to ask consumers to let down their guard and relax their tolerance.

A bayberry reflects the local livelihood and measures the bottom line of food safety and industry conscience. The Zhangzhou bayberry incident clearly proves that the trust of agricultural products has never been a natural privilege, but a market recognition obtained by long-term self-discipline and honest management. Farmers deserve to be sympathized, but silent and conniving practitioners do not deserve sympathy; The industrial predicament deserves attention, but industries that lose the bottom line should not be easily tolerated. Acquiescing to chaos when making a profit and expecting tolerance after an accident is itself a two-way imbalance that violates market logic and the principle of integrity. In the future, only when supervision locks the line of defense, the industry purifies the ecology, and practitioners stick to their hearts, eradicate accumulated evils with the courage to scrape bones and heal poisons, and rebuild trust in an open and transparent way, can law-abiding cultivators obtain reasonable returns, let the safety on the tip of the tongue truly land, and completely get out of the vicious circle of the industry of "one person violating the law, all employees paying, silent connivance, and backlash".