A fact-finding team formed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China 's highest legislative body, will next month go to five municipalities and provinces, including Shanghai and Guangdong, to check how a national law on food hygiene has been implemented since it became effective in 1995.

Local NPC standing committees will conduct investigations in nine other municipalities and provinces including Beijing.

Those places are all densely-populated with thriving food industries and enormous food consumption, according to Peng Peiyun, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

With about five million companies throughout China, the food industry became the leading sector in terms of annual output value five years ago.

On average, food accounts for about 40 percent of total consumer purchases in China, according to the Chinese Association of Consumers, a national watchdog for the rights of consumers.

However, the association found that consumer complaints about food problems accounted for 20 percent of total gripes during the 1998-2000 period -- a relatively high total.

The most concerns over food safety involved the use of inferior, fake or contaminated ingredients, food sold after its expiry date, and substandard food-processing conditions.

Health Minister Zhang Wenkang has said that Chinese people still face serious health risks from food safety problems, even though food hygiene has improved remarkably on the whole over the past 20 years.

Zhang attributed the improvement mainly to a legal network composed of a national law on food hygiene, about 100 sets of government regulations and 500 sets of national standards concerning the production, circulation, processing, storage, transportation and selling of food.

"However, greed for exorbitant profits has driven some immoral and lawless people to ignore laws and adulterate or even use toxic and harmful materials in food making," said Peng, who will head the fact-finding team.

Team members would focus on problems that prompt the most complaints, and find out what local governments had done to enforce the law, she said.

(China Daily May 1, 2002)