I'm with the Chinese on this one; the penalty for fucking with the food supply is... well, death does seem a little extreme, so maybe I'm not completely with the Chinese on it, but I can certainly see where they're coming from.
If you can't trust what you're putting in your mouth, the game of modern civilisation is over.
Sorry, but I trust the always fresh, usually picked under 24 hours ago food sold in the market here in China far more than at the end of a global supply chain dominated by multiple layers of near-monopolistic intermediaries. None of that cold chain, international shipping nonsense. Here we work on volume and speed.
I've never picked up a packet of infant formula and wondered so much if it's going to kill my child that I purchase a different brand that had to be smuggled to me across the HK border.
I expect that something picked off a field and delivered to you unprocessed is probably relatively safe (although those fields are, by and large, unregulated and uninspected). Anything that has gone through an unregulated, uninspected factory? Significantly less safe.
If you can't trust what you're putting in your mouth, the game of modern civilisation is over.