BEIJING: China has made steady improvements in food safety protocols in recent years, but enhanced oversight is still needed for the nation’s food industry chain — particularly for online food sales and school meals, according to a report delivered to the nation’s top legislature on Sunday.
Over the past five years, China has maintained a consistently high pass rate in food safety sampling inspections, said Cai Dafeng, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, in the report.
The nation made amendments to its Food Safety Law in 2015, and both the central and local governments have introduced multiple supporting regulations. Cai said that a legal framework for food safety has largely taken shape.
To date, the National Health Commission has issued nearly 1,700 national food safety standards, covering more than 340 categories of commonly consumed foods.
Local governments have also formulated 171 regional standards, which have “played a positive role in promoting signature local dishes”, according to the report.
For example, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, local standards for river snail rice noodles have helped drive the total output value of its industrial chain to exceed 75 billion yuan ($10.5 billion).
In recent years, authorities have carried out campaigns targeting meat products, counterfeit alcohol and the misuse of food additives. About 2.5 million food safety violations have been investigated, resulting in occupational bans for over 280,000 individuals and fines totaling 16.2 billion yuan.
Through the national 12315 consumer hotline, around 9.2 million food-related complaints have been handled over the past five years, recovering 230 million yuan in economic losses.
While acknowledging these achievements, the report calls for enhanced oversight across the entire food industry chain, improved testing capacity, stricter enforcement of standards, and better regulation of emerging sectors such as online food sales and school meals. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
