I like exotic foods. One of my favorite is salted red-yolk duck eggs. Except for the red yolks, making salted eggs is simple. After washing fresh duck eggs, you then put them in clean, salt-saturated water (one safe choice is the cooled boiled water). Wait for a few weeks so that salt can permeate the eggs thoroughly. Then you boil the eggs before serving them. They taste delicious.

But how come egg yolks have a red color? The answer lies in the duck’s diet. We know that a lot of foods have carotenoids such as beta carotene. If ducks eat foods that have a high concentration of carotenoids, they will lay eggs with yellow yolks. Similarly, if ducks eat foods that have red pigments, their egg yolks will become red.

We expect that the red yolks occur naturally. However, in modern era, natural foods are rare. In some areas, farmers start to intentionally feed ducks with red pigments to make red yolks. The most distasteful and dangerous practice is to feed ducks with industrial red dyes instead of approved food additives. Unfortunately, this bad practice has already happened in some Chinese farms.

Recently Chinese government cracked down a few farmers for feeding ducks with carcinogenic red dyes. Millions of eggs have been taken off the shelves. Consumers lost not only one favorite food but also their trust on farmers one more time. Farmers, no matter whether committed the crime or not, lost one profitable product.

Some may think that this is another testimony that market oriented activity will compromise morality. This is not true. In a healthy market, there are not only producers and consumers but also regulators. One common regulator is government. Through governmental regulations, any unfair competitions or dangerous products should be removed from the market. Because many farmers are ignorant about health issues and agriculture regulations, this cracking down of dangerous red-yolk eggs will give them a lesson on how to be responsible producers. In the long run, it will do them good.

It will be a long time for me to eat salted red-yolk eggs. So sad!