Speech by Wang Xuening, Deputy Director General of Health Supervision Bureau, MOH

Ladies and gentlemen,

In the following I am going to make an introduction about MOH implementing National 11th Five-Year Plan for food and medicine, mainly from four aspects, namely food safety standard, food safety testing, monitoring and risk assessment and food safety inspection.

• Improving the system of food safety standard

According to Food Hygiene Law, MOH is in charge of setting food safety standards. Till now, MOH has stipulated and finished over 400 standards, basically covering the criteria about all aspects of food production from the raw materials to finished products which might threaten health, as well as the requirements in all the procedures of food production and processing. These standards are composed of safety general standards, product standards, hygienic performance for manufactures and standards for testing measures (including standards for diagnostic technologies). After China become member of WTO, following international common practice and abiding by the principles of safeguarding health, risk assessment and conforming to national situation, MOH carried out comprehensive examination for all the food safety standards. More than 300 standards have been amended and launched. As a result, our food safety standards now are more scientific and more compliant to international practices.

Codex Alimentarius standards are the technical rules for food safety and food trade. Relevant agreements of WTO provide that the codex is the foundation for arbitrating food trade disputes. In 1984, our country joined Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) and MOH is the chair of Chinese Food Codex Committee. For many years, MOH actively organized and participated in the work of making relevant international food standards. In 2006, on behalf of the nation, MOH won the bid of chairing Codex Committee on Food Additives. We are the only developing country among all the host counties of the 10 subsidiary general committees. In April 2007, MOH for the first time hosted the 39th Meeting of Codex Committee on Food Additives. The meeting was applauded by participating nations and received high appraisal. It fully demonstrates our capability of dealing with international food codex affairs.

Based on the hot issues of international and domestic food safety, MOH has made 274 plans of stipulating and amending food safety standards in 2006 - 2008. During the 11th Five Year Plan, while actively undertakes and participates in making international food codex standards, MOH will well build and manage the standard committee and enhance the coordination and consistency of food standards, and set and amend standards focusing on food microbiology, food pollutants, food additives, food container and packaging materials.

• Improving the capacity of food safety testing

Food safety testing is an important technical tool for implementing food safety rules and regulations. Health departments have established a four-layered system from county level to city level, provincial level and state level which takes Centers of Disease Control (CDC) as the core. MOH stipulated Food Safety Testing Measures ( physico-chemical ) , Food Safety Testing Measures ( Microbiology ) , Safety Assessment Procedures and Measures of Food toxicology, Norms on Health-Care Food Examination and Technology Assessment and standards for food poisoning diagnosis, all of which laid the foundation for our food testing measures and formed the methodology for testing and examination.

CDCs at all levels are undertaking large amount of food inspection work, including inspecting millions of food samples from 22 categories every year, on-site investigation, collecting samples and examination for emergent food safety incidents, sample test for food poisoning, sample test for safeguarding food safety of large-scaled event and for consumer complaint as well as other works of food safety inspection. Local disease control institutions are able to do qualitative and quantitative analysis of hundreds of substances. The national CDC has the capacity of research and developing new testing programs and identifying unknown substance. National and dozens of provincial CDCs in China have passed WHO quality control test of inspection network for six successive years.

During the 11th Five Year Plan, MOH will increase the input to food testing institutions, taking capacity building as the focus. It will fully leverage the existing advantage of resources to enhance capacity building, increase scientific research, including developing the testing measures and inspection technologies of key food pollutant and food-borne disease, as well as fast testing technology. At the same time, the test for the quality control of the laboratories will also be strengthened to improve the quality of statistics.

• Increasing food safety monitoring and risk assessment

Food safety monitoring and risk assessment are the scientific basis of food safety inspection. MOH has established monitoring network for national food pollutants and food-borne diseases to adopt national diet and nutrition survey and national diet study which made risk assessment about the hazardous factors in food.

In our country, the network for monitoring food pollutants and food-borne diseases has covered 21 provinces. Every year the net will monitor 45 chemical pollutants and several pathogens in 53 kinds of food which are consumed most. Totally, there will be over 400,000 statistics with which the situation and dynamic trend of major pollutants and food-borne diseases can be detected. Diet and nutrition surveillance is also a critical part of the whole network. MOH has organized four national diet and nutrition survey and three total diet study. Because of the hard work, MOH has grasped the dynamic trend of diet structure, eating habits and disease spectrum of our residence. It also did research on the hazardous factors in people's diet. China is the first developing country which has successful total diet study, because of which we are regarded as the good example for developing countries by WHO. All the statistics from the studies and investigations have become the basis for us to make risk assessment, food standards and relevant regulations. In recent years, MOH, based on the problems detected in the studies, issued about ten warnings about castor bean, molded sugar cane, puffer fish, raw aquatic products, poisonous mushroom and so on.

Risk assessment is the foundation of international common food regulation, standard, policy and measures. Since 1970s, MOH began to organize risk assessment about the pollutants in food and resin and extracts of the formed products in plastic food packaging. After accession to WTO, MOH intensifies the work of risk assessment. It has made focused assessment about microbiology, chemical pollutants, additives and fortifier in food. In the past years, the ministry issued several assessment results bout Sudan red, Acrylamide in fried food, Potassium bromated in flour, iodine in infant formula milk, processing aids in PVC fresh-keeping film, Maire Yew and etc. The results play an important role in guiding the consumption behavior and urging the public and the international community to understand our food management policy.

MOH has deployed relevant work according to the new Five Year Plan. It will enlarge the scale, enrich the contents and better applying the results of monitoring.

• Enhancing food and catering hygiene supervision and management

In recent years, MOH adopted the following measures from in terms of supervision and enforcing regulations: first, improving food safety regulation. The ministry has made and implemented Administration Measures on Food Safety Permission license and Administration Regulations on Responsibility Ascertaining of School Food Poisoning; amended Administration Measures on Food Additives, National Supervision Regulations on Selective Examination of Health-Related Products and other regulations; and stipulated and implemented Quantitative Graded Management System of Food Safety Supervision. Second, launching specific inspection activities. We took the hygienic permission of food production and selling units, food additives, functional food, rural food, school food as the focus of our work and conducted a specific inspection. The licenses of all the producers and sellers who could not meet the requirements were revoked and 38 approval numbers of functional food were withdrawn. Large cases and typical cases of illegal food production and selling have been investigated and punished. Third, increasing capacity building in food safety supervision. Through the implementing supervision programs in western regions and increasing input, we have prepared on-site supervision, tools for collecting evidence and fast testing equipments at grass-root institutions which have led to the improvement of supervision and management. Fourth, holding activities of food safety education. Every first week of November is the Promotion Week of National Law on Food Safety with which we improved the sense of law of the food producers and sellers and the knowledge of food safety of consumers.

In terms of the management of food service sector, health authorities at all levels should follow Administration Measures on Food Safety in Food Service Sector and Hygiene Regulation on Food Service Sector and Distribution for Mess to enhance the supervision on food safety in food service sector. In 2000, the ministry issued the quantities graded management system to improve the efficiency and encourage the enthusiasm of the food service sector, supervisors and the consumers. This year, our ministry launched trials of notification system of catering inspection in some areas. In other words, we will publish the supervision results at the restaurants. Therefore the consumers will know the hygienic situation of the restaurants and they can also participate in the hygiene management. At the same time, the public participation will improve the supervisors' responsibility and their work. During the 11th Five-Year Plan, our ministry will continue to promote sunshine law enforcement, intensify the enforcement and reduce its cost.