Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, has developed the world's first "smart chopsticks" that can detect if food is contaminated.

China has a growing concern for contaminated food or drinks in light of unrelenting cases of mass food poisonings or contaminated food.

In 2008, three infants died due to contaminated milk. This year, Husi, a food supplier, was investigated for selling spoiled meat to fast food firms such as KFC, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut.

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A video caught Husi staff retrieving chicken pieces that had fallen to the floor and packaging this pieces. There are also pieces of meat sold in Chinese market that are glowing blue.

These problems have created a market for the new Baidu smart chopsticks.

These smart chopsticks are used to detect if restaurants are using "gutter oil," or cooking oil taken from the sewer, instead of fresh cooking oil.

Future chopstick models, though, might be to detect how much salt was used for preparing the food. It might even detect contaminated water.

Baidu CEO Robin Li said in the future, the chopsticks will be able to ascertain the origin of the cooking oil, the water quality, whether the food is spoiled and what nutrition it contains.

The smart chopsticks come with a pocket-sized spectrometer used to detect what food is being examined. It was demonstrated at Baidu's annual technology conference.

TagsSmart chopsticks, Robin Li, quartz