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By Wu Chen and Wu Qiong (China Daily/Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-09-24 07:13

China has been in the media spotlight for food safety recently, but it has gone all out to ensure that its food products are safe and to restore consumer confidence home and abroad.

Its efforts seem to have accelerated with the publication of the first White Paper on food safety on August 17 and the naming of Vice-Premier Wu Yi as head of a high-profile panel on product quality and safety issues. That was followed by a series of efforts by government organs to tighten food safety measures.

On August 31, the country's quality watchdog officially introduced the landmark recall system for unsafe food products and toys, making producers responsible for preventing and eliminating unsafe items.

Food safety became a big concern in China after a series of food contamination cases were reported from across the country. Last November, the country's food safety watchdog found seven companies supplying red-yolk eggs that contained the dangerous Sudan Red dye, which is used in the leather and fabric industries but is banned from use in food products.

The same month, three people were arrested in Shanghai for adding 3-4 grams of banned steroids to each ton of pig feed to increase the proportion of lean meat. The steroids, which prevent pigs from accumulating fat, can be harmful to humans. More than 300 people fell ill after eating meat from pigs that had been fed the steroids.

Also last year, carcinogenic residues were found in turbots sold in Beijing and Shanghai markets. Even international fast food giant KFC was accused of adding the carcinogenic Sudan 1 dye to its roast chicken wings.

Ministry of Health figures show that in the first half of this year, China reported 134 food poisoning cases, in which 4,457 people fell ill and 96 died.

Food is China's biggest industry with last year's output estimated to be 2.4 trillion yuan ($315.8 billion), according to the China National Food Industry Association.

Bitter stories made the rounds after people fell victim to food poisoning. In June 2006, more than 130 people contracted parasitic diseases after eating undercooked snails in a restaurant. One of them was Yang Fangfang. His family, including his parents, wife and 18-month daughter, fell ill.

The Beijing Health Bureau said the infection was caused because the food was not cooked properly and because the restaurant had failed to remove eel-worms in the snails.

Although Yang survived, he still complains of pain, sometimes severe, in his lower body and stomach. A gourmet before the incident, Yang now regards food as a potential threat to his life.

In overseas markets, substandard exports from China since March - from pet food, drugs, toothpastes and toys to aquatic products and tires - has sparked concern over "made-in-China" products. Diethylene glycol contaminated medicine exported from China was been blamed for dozens of deaths in Panama. Deaths of some dogs and cats in North America were attributed to tainted Chinese wheat gluten.

Jing Luyan, 24, who works for a Beijing-based travel agency, says she trusts the government and the media for information on food safety issues.

"If they say I shouldn't eat something, then I stop immediately, it's as simple as that," Jing says. Many of her colleagues and friends do the same.

Pressure from home and abroad prompted the Chinese government to acknowledge that the country's food and drug safety situation was not satisfactory and that enhanced supervision was needed. At a press conference in July, China's food and drug watchdog spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said: "As a developing country, China's food and drug supervision work began late and its foundations are weak. Therefore, the food and drug safety situation is not something we can be optimistic about".

The press conference was held jointly by five major ministries in charge of food safety: the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and the State Food and Drug Administration.

It was a rare attempt by the government to seriously address the issue, and it enumerated a series of measures to be taken. But it failed to offer a convincing mechanism for coordinating work among the five ministries, leaving the murky regulation of food safety unresolved.

There have been worries over China's food safety supervision because at least five ministries are in charge of food safety and coordination among them is no easy job.

Vice-Minister of Health Wang Longde went on the record as saying that new laws were needed to strengthen food safety supervision and the duties of relevant government agencies had to be coordinated. The government has stepped up efforts since then to address the issue to restore confidence in Chinese food products sold at home and abroad.

China's first-ever White Paper on food safety published recently sets forth a series of achievements along with planned measures to improve food quality - from setting up a national food recall system to increasing exchanges with quality officials from other countries.

Wu Yi's panel, meant to address the country's problems in food safety and product quality, partly dispelled people's concerns over lax supervision of food safety owing to too many regulators. Analysts say the newly set up panel, headed by Wu Yi, will improve supervision.

The government, on its part, has started a four-month nationwide campaign to improve food safety and product quality. Wu describes the campaign as a "special battle" to ensure public health and uphold the reputation of Chinese products. The campaign will target farm produce, processed food, the catering sector, drugs, pork, imported and exported goods and products closely linked to human safety and health.

Luo Yunbo, dean of the food science and nutritional engineering school of China Agricultural University, says the White Paper offers authoritative information on food safety, and the latest moves reflect the government's determination to improve product quality.

The paper says the percentage of food products that passed quality inspections had risen steadily in recent years, up from 77.9 last year to 85.1 percent this year. As for small food processors, believed to be a major food safety threat in China, the paper says the country will prompt small-scale producers to form larger entities to ensure better food safety.

Almost 80 percent of China's food producers operate in small workshops employing fewer than 10 workers. By the end of June, the government had weeded out 5,631 unqualified small producers, forced 8,814 to stop production and asked 5,385 to improve their standard.

The number of small food producers will be halved by 2010, the quality supervision administration said after the country published its first-ever five-year plan on food safety in May. Also, the government wants to weed out all uncertified producers by 2012.

The government is seriously addressing overseas concerns over Chinese food products. It has shut down the factory that supplied the tainted medicine to Panama, and two firms that exported contaminated wheat and corn protein, which ended up in pet food in the United States, killing a number of dogs and cats in North America.

The country's top quality watchdog has announced that all major food exports produced from September 1 have to carry labels showing they have passed inspection to help stop illegal exports and bolster consumer confidence in the quality and safety of Chinese food products.

The White Paper says the acceptance rate of Chinese foodstuffs exported to the European Union (EU) was 99.8 percent in the first half of this year, followed exports to the US (99.1 percent).

Japanese quarantine authorities found Chinese food exports had the highest acceptance rate, 99.42 percent, followed by the EU (99.38 percent) and then the US (98.69 percent).

But food safety cannot be improved greatly overnight, and people seem to differ on what they can do as individuals to bring about lasting change.

Take Jing Luyan, for instance, who is fond of tasting different types of food, especially traditional Beijing snacks. But traditional snacks are usually cooked in shabby restaurants in small alleys.

"I believe that the most delicious food can hardly ever be found in swanky establishments with irreproachable hygienic conditions," says Jing.

She has never fallen ill after eating at street corner stalls, she says.