Trying to encourage confidence in China's food sector, Shao Mingli, commissioner of China's State Food and Drug Administration, has reaffirmed the nation's commitment to quality at the second meeting of the Beijing Olympic Games Food Safety Expert Panel was held in Beijing.
Shao pointed out that food safety has grown as an issue of great strategic significance, attracting worldwide attention. Attaching great importance to food safety, he says the Chinese government has made vigorous efforts to push for the establishment of food safety supervision and national food safety control systems at the strategic level. As a result, a system of responsibility characterized by "local governments take full responsibility, functional divisions take respective responsibilities and enterprises act as top responsible person" and a national emergency response system for major food safety events have been set up.
China has also witnessed, according to Shao, the implementation of the food assurance project and special rectification campaign on food safety over the last five years; construction of the food safety credit system; initial establishment of the food safety information release system; the formulation of the five-year outline for food safety publicity and education; and the progressive shaping of social supervision system for food safety.
Shao says current food safety situation in China has improved, with enhanced safety assurance capability, basic regulation of production and distribution order, incerased awareness of food safety and rights protection among the public and increasing supervision both from the society and media.
The State Council has also issued the 11th Five-Year Plan for National Food and Drug Safety recently. During the 11th Five-Year Plan period, China will further intensify infrastructure construction for food safety supervision, improve standard systems, enhance inspection level, innovate supervision mechanism and ensure public food safety. The food safety assurance project for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games will be listed in the key projects under the 11th Five-Year Plan, which will be vigorously supported by the State Food and Drug Administration.
Shao stressed that Beijing Municipal Government has done lots of work to ensure food safety in the capital, and put forward the goal for setting up a modern food safety control system in the capital. In particular, Beijing Municipal Government has set up the monitoring system and tracing system for food safety, implemented work for food safety at the 2008 Olympic Games using modern scientific and technological means.
