AQSIQ Urges to Ensure Food Safety for Coming Festival Season

According to the announcement, the quality inspection agencies should step up supervision and administration on food product manufacturing, and ensure that the food makers take the primary responsibilities.

29 Dec 2009 --- AQSIQ issued an announcement on December 14, urging the quality inspection agencies at all levels to strengthen supervision, inspection, and anti-counterfeiting law-enforcement to ensure the quality and safety of food and hot-selling products during the New Year’s Day holiday and the Spring Festival.

According to the announcement, the quality inspection agencies should step up supervision and administration on food product manufacturing, and ensure that the food makers take the primary responsibilities. First, food producers with safety problems found out in the past will be laid focus on, and ordered to implement rectification measures. Those that fail to meet the standards shall not be allowed to continue production. Second, priority should be given to the supervision of areas and zones engaged in production of hot-selling food products for festival seasons, so as to ensure that the producers comply with the requirements on primary production conditions and environmental sanitation, and will not lower quality requirements to increase supply to meet the market demands. Third, food producers should be required to assume the primary responsibilities in ensuring food safety by taking effective measures including verification of raw materials, inspection of products leaving the factory, and record-keeping system.

All quality inspection agencies should tighten supervision and examination of food products and fireworks. First, organizing food quality and safety surveillance in the light of the characteristics of food production and consumption during the festivals. Focus should be laid on food products with great demands and high safety risks, and manufacturers found unable to keep steady quality in former surveillances. Major items to be inspected include hygiene indexes and food additives. Second, stepping up supervision on quality of fireworks and firecrackers, and follow-up inspection on relevant businesses that failed to meet the standards in recent years. Third, making public the surveillance results, including qualified products and problem products in time to give consumers adequate guidance.

According to the announcement, all quality inspection agencies should enhance inspection and quarantine on import and export food products. First, strictly ensuring safety and quality of import food products during the festivals, strengthening inspection and quarantine of major ones including meat, aquatic food, dairy and dairy products at ports, enhancing verification of import hygiene certificate, and cracking down on illegal behaviors such as forging documents and adulterating/altering certificates. Second, strengthening supervision on export food producers to fully ensure the products can meet the standards of importing countries and regions. Third, strengthening inspection and quarantine on food products supplied for Hong Kong and Macao SARs. Fourth, carrying out effective risk information monitoring on food and cosmetic products of major countries and regions, so as to timely detect and properly handle related quality and safety problems in trade.

In addition, the quality inspection agencies should effectively enforce the anti-counterfeiting laws to ensure the safety of food and hot-selling products during the festivals. Priority should be given to high-risk food products including spirits and hot products, with great efforts exerted to stringently crack down on such illegal behaviors as non-conformity with compulsory standards, adulterating products or posing fake products as genuine, shoddy products as good, or non-standard products as standard, and non-conformity between label and product. The quality inspection agencies should carry out inspection and checking on a more frequent basis on food and fireworks manufacturers and processors, and tighten supervision on businesses with violation histories and districts with more quality and safety problems exposed including the rural areas and urban-rural continuum. Violators will be investigated and dealt with stringently and timely. Businesses that fail to meet requirements should be ordered to stop production and sales, recall substandard products, and take corrective measures within a time limit, and the business’ production license should be revoked if the circumstances are serious. Cases serious enough to constitute a crime should be transferred to the public security organs to investigate the criminal responsibilities.