Food safety tops deputies' concern
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-03-10 06:27

Food safety has become one of the hottest topics discussed at the ongoing annual sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

NPC deputy Wang Weizhong, who is a professor at Northeast China's Jilin University, said he is quite annoyed by the flood of bad news about inferior foods in recent years.

"Every time I watch food quality reports on TV, I get a headache. Now I don't even dare watch such reports," Wang said.

From inferior milk powder to dyed dry shrimps, from high pesticide-remnants on vegetables to toxic pickles, tainted food scandals have frequently become the subject of sensational headlines in recent years and caused great concern among consumers.

Legislators reflect their anxieties, and among the proposals deputies have made at the ongoing NPC session, food safety issues are among the uppermost concerns.

Yang Guolin, an NPC deputy from the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China, said the country needs to set up a common food safety watchdog to co-ordinate all related government bodies.

At present, many government bodies share responsibility for safeguarding foods, resulting in such problems as unclearly defined responsibility and management overlap, Yang said.

The Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for supervision and management of primary agricultural products.

The State General Administration for Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine is in charge of supervising the food processing sector.

The State Administration of Industry and Commerce is in charge of supervision of food circulation markets.

The Ministry of Health is responsible for management and supervision of restaurants and public canteens.

The State Food and Drug Administration is responsible for overall food safety supervision, co-ordinating different departments and organizing investigations of large food safety accidents.

The National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce are in charge of administrative work in the food processing, circulation and consumption sectors.

Providing a safe food supply should become one of the nation's highest priorities, said Shu Anna, a CPPCC member from Central China's Henan Province.

A three-party food safety credibility network should be formed, including credibility assessments from government agencies, industrial associations and society, Shu said.

Meanwhile, legislators and advisers are calling for those found to be producing unsafe food products to receive harsher punishments.

The country cracked more than 390,000 food safety scandals last year, involving food products worth of 1.4 billion yuan (US$170 million), statistics indicate.

The most shocking case was the dozen infants who died of malnutrition after eating inferior milk powder last year in East China's Anhui Province.

(China Daily 03/10/2005 page3)