"Special report: the legacy of Hunan’s polluted soils" 7 July 2014

[...] On May 16, 2013, food safety officials in Guangzhou announced that, of 18 samples of rice and rice products from Hunan Province, eight were heavily contaminated with cadmium, a heavy-metal that accumulates in the body and attacks the kidneys and other organs. Of the eight most contaminated samples, five had come from three rice mills in You county [...]

When the scandal first broke, the You county government responded with denials. An official statement from the county government stated that there was no heavy metal mining within 10 kilometers of the source of the problem rice, but many say the pollution has been an open secret for years. [...] Yin Lihui, who heads the Hunan Agricultural Resources and Environmental Protection Station, admits that pollution from non-ferrous metal mining  is particularly grave in the watershed of the Xiang River. The Economic Daily, a national newspaper, has reported that the Xiang, Hunan’s ‘mother river’, is the most polluted by heavy metals of all China’s rivers. [...]

The government’s plan to set up a system of safe farming practices and monitoring was due to be completed this year. But concerns about food safety are in conflict with the central government’s anxieties over national food security, which leads it to press agricultural provinces such as Henan and Hunan to produce more food, pressure that makes the provincial authorities reluctant to discourage farmers from planting, even in contaminated land. [...]