Shenzhen, which currently buys over 90 percent of its farm produce from outside the city, is building its own farms to provide safe, nutritious food for residents.

The city government will invest 600 million yuan (US$75 million) on more than 200 farms located inside and outside the city by 2008, Lai Zhiping, director general of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery, told a call-in radio program on Thursday.

"These farms will provide 60 percent of the meat, vegetables and aquatic products in the Shenzhen market in 2008," said Lai.

Lai said his bureau would monitor these farms to make sure their produce is free of harmful pesticides and additives.

Fifty-five such farms have already been built, of which 37 are inside Shenzhen. Most of the remaining farms will be built outside Shenzhen, as the city is suffering a land shortage. Vegetables from these farms will carry a "pollution-free" sticker and will be available in major supermarkets.

The aim of building such farms is to ensure food quality "at the very source," said Lai. "It's hard to control food quality in the sales sector," said Lai, "To totally get rid of polluted food, we need to control the production sector."

With fewer than 100 food inspectors, Lai's bureau only inspects some of the farm produce in the markets. About 8.8 percent of the vegetables and 4 percent of the pork in Shenzhen markets did not meet the national health standards in 2005, official figures show. But the actual figures may be bigger because much of the food in the markets was not inspected, Lai acknowledged.

In a recent incident, four people were poisoned after eating pork lung soup at a restaurant in Luohu on October 11. Investigations showed the soup contained Clenbuterol, a chemical that is used to build muscles in pigs but is toxic to humans. The four people were hospitalized for four days.

(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2006)