The quality of major edible agricultural products in Shanghai will meet State standards in two to three years. This was the promise made by Shanghai city government.
Since last April, the city government has focused on controlling the quality of six categories of agricultural products: vegetables, fruit, milk, domestic animals and fowl, grain and oil, and aquatic products.
Meanwhile, farm chemicals, animal and fish chemicals, hormones, additives and heavy metals will be seriously controlled to avoid contamination and food poisoning, according to the non-pollution food plan conference in Shanghai this week.
"Actually, Shanghai used to have problems of food safety," said Vice-Mayor Feng Guoqin.
In 1995, there were 23 cases of food poisoning in the city, involving more than 1,000 victims.
However, the situation has diminished in recent years, with 15 people suffering from poisoned food in 2000.
The city consumes 40-to-60 billion tons of agricultural products annually, according to statistics by Shanghai Municipal Agricultural Commission. Among them, only 20 billion tons are locally produced.
"Food safety is a very important task to the city with 16 million residents," Feng said.
To guarantee food safety, the city set up quality standards for 12 kinds of food most popular with local people.
Shanghai has also released a series of regulations for exporting agricultural products based on the standards set in the United States and Japan.
The new regulations provide supervision throughout the whole food production process - from the field to the table.
"In implementation, food quality control will encompass the production process and the whole supply chain, not only at the retail level as before," said Liu Hong, director of food hygiene & safety at Shanghai Municipal Centre for Disease Control & Prevention.
(China Daily January 6, 2002)
