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China strengthens food quality supervision
A recent survey indicates that the market entry system China has been adopting for food has become an effective weapon to protect people's health, and a stricter mechanism will do more help to a clean market. The market entry system introduced more than two years ago requires that all food producers obtain a license for each item they produce. Without such a licence, their products will be out of reach. And if a food is then found to have any quality problems via routine checks, its producer will be punished and have their license revoked. By making the comparison of food quality in three years' time, Liu Zhaobin, spokesman with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine proves how their quality has been greatly enhanced. "In 2004, nearly 92 percent of the five basic kinds of food, which includes rice, flour, cooking oil, soy sauce and vinegar, have been up to standard, up 31 percent compared to 2001." In 2001, there were some 60,000 enterprises in total, producing these five sorts of food, but less than 60 percent of their products met the required standard. The imposition of a strict market entry system has caused half of these enterprises to go bankrupt, which has lifted the quality of these foods overall. The second group of foods to be processed for market accession are a group of ten sorts of foods, including canned foods and cooked meats. While this group is being processed, enterprises who have not yet received production licenses are only permitted to sell the same products as those already holding a license. China will finish licensing enterprises producing these ten sorts of foods by the end of June. After the deadline, food without a license will be dropped out of market. Ji Zhengkun, a senior official from China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine says the country is on the right track to realizing a market accession system covering all kinds of foods within the next few years: "We initiated market accession for the last thirteen kinds of food at the beginning of 2005. Before that, we held a nationwide investigation of the nearly 20,000 enterprises producing these 13 kinds of food and established quality data for them." China has now completed enacting relevant regulations for the market accession of this last group of 13 foods.
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