Sanitation Issues
Since the production methods for stinky tofu are unregulated and typically use secret recipes, very few producers willingly report their ingredients. Since the stinkiest tofu is considered the most prized, and normal fermentation can take up to 3 months, many unscrupulous producers add various unsanitary ingredients to their brines in order to artificially increase the tofu's odor quickly so it can be sold after only a few days. Documented methods used by Chinese street vendors to artificially enhance the odor of their stinky tofu include human feces and rotten pork juice in the brine and encouraging flies to lay live maggots in the liquid so that their digestive juices will help ferment the tofu more quickly.
Production methods vary widely and those in regulated countries are banned from using feces, maggots or rotten meat in the brine, citing risks of foodborne illness, parasites and communicable disease via the fecal-oral route, such as cholera, yellow fever and typhoid.
Read more about this topic: Stinky Tofu
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