Hide Your Grills: Beijing Barbecue Crackdown May Come This Summer

For anyone getting ready to fire up their grill for the summer, don't light that match just yet.

Citing Beijing's air pollution as the reason, Beijing municipal officials are preparing another crackdown on outdoor and roadside food sellers. Vendors have come under fire in the past as being "unsanitary" and even "uncivilized," but this is the first time that the grillers have been cited as polluters, according to China Daily. Flagrant cooking of meat and other outdoor delights could result in monetary penalties as high as RMB 5,000, and of course, confiscation of barbecuing equipment, China Daily said.

"As the weather warms up, the streets gradually fill up with roadside barbecue spots, sizzling kebabs on the grill and cold beer, which also create serious air pollution and undesired noise for the neighborhoods," the paper quoted Dang Xuefeng, spokesman for the capital's bureau of city administration and law enforcement, as saying. We'd like to know which roadside barbecue spots are selling cold beer.

Regardless, grill smoke is a source of PM2.5 particulate matter, the main culprit in Beijing pollution, according to the paper, although The Wall Street Journal questioned its role.

“'I can’t believe that it’s actually a source [of PM2.5] that they need to worry about as compared with the enormous pollution that comes from motor vehicles, coal-fired power plants and big industrial factories,'” WSJ quoted Vance Wagner, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation, as saying.

No word yet on whether suburbanites can expect backyard-to-backyard searches for grilling implements this summer.

Photo: thenoodlediaries.com.