Law enforcement officials inspect a rice noodle processing plant without a license in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on May 14. provided to China Daily

China has passed what is touted as its toughest food-safety law. The push to provide safe food to more than 1.3 billion consumers is providing opportunities for US companies and their expertise, Paul Welitzkin reports from New York.

US companies and academic institutions have found a growing market in China, and it's driven by a common bond: the need to eat safe food.

Food scandals have besieged China in recent years as it feeds more than 1.3 billion people daily and made food safety a major issue.

"Safe food is a fundamental: people want, and need, to know that every bite of food they take is safe to eat," Premier Li Keqiang recently told the country's State Council, or Cabinet.

In a survey of more than 3,000 residents in 2013, the Pew Research Group said about four in 10, or 38 percent, consider food safety a very big problem, a 26 percentage-point increase since a similar survey in 2008.

Responding to people's concerns, on April 24 China's lawmakers passed what is being called the country's toughest food safety law. It takes effect on Oct 1 and gives regulatory bodies more authority, sets heftier fines and penalties for violations and introduces guidelines for product manufacturing and production.

Previous government efforts to prevent contamination and enforce hygiene standards in the food chain struggled to keep up with a rapidly expanding economy and middle class. Added to the scandals is China's high level of pollution in the air, rivers and soil. According to government figures, up to 40 percent of rivers and 20 percent of farmland is polluted by heavy metals from industry and mining.

As food scandals have rocked public confidence and left the Chinese feeling vulnerable, they have created a market for organic food and foreign food imports over local products. China is the largest grocery market in the world and is set to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2016, according to the Institute of Grocery Distribution.

New opportunities

The scandals also have presented opportunities for US and other foreign-based companies to help tackle the country's food-safety problems with products, services and expertise that range from pest management to hand hygiene.

Companies including Ecolab, AIB and NSF International have established operations in China to provide training, food product development and programs to develop new or improved testing procedures. US academic institutions also have partnered with their Chinese counterparts and the government to help China improve food regulation.

Among the most high-profile food scandals that have besieged Chinese consumers in recent years occurred in 2008. Powdered baby milk and other dairy products were found to contain dangerously high levels of the industrial chemical melamine. The incident left at least six babies dead and more than 300,000 ill.

US-based companies also have been tarred by scandal. Last summer workers at KFC and McDonald's meat supplier Shanghai Husi Food Co - a unit of US-based OSI Group LLC - were shown in a television report reusing meat that had fallen to the factory floor, as well as mixing fresh and expired meat. Wal-Mart Stores, the world's largest retailer, recalled donkey meat sold at some outlets in China last year after tests showed the product contained fox meat.

Food safety is not a China-only-problem. As global trade has moved into the food chain, countries have found it difficult to maintain a food safety net with products coming in from all corners of the world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that globally food and water-borne diseases lead to about 2.2 million deaths annually. WHO said that a study in 2011 showed that in China alone more than 94 million people become ill from bacteria food-borne disease every year, with approximately 3.4 million hospitalizations and more than 8,500 deaths.

"Many places in the world have food safety problems. It happens in every country, not just in China," said Patrick Wall, co-chairman of the International Expert Panel on Food Safety at the International Union of Food Science and Technology and a professor of public health at Ireland's University College Dublin.

He gave as examples an outbreak of mad cow disease in the United Kingdom and the contamination of food with dioxin in Belgium.

"The global food supply chain has changed; it means that our food on the table can possibly come from any corner in the world," Wall told China Daily. "Food safety has become a global public health problem."

Even the US, with its long established system of food safety regulations on the federal and state levels, has suffered from several incidents. Tainted food sickens 48 million Americans a year, sends nearly 128,000 of them to the hospital and leaves more than 3,000 dead, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Food that is shipped from the farm to the home or restaurant can travel through a long and complex process. Safety concerns begin when a food product is either grown or developed and continues in the shipping process. Certain food products like milk must be refrigerated while others like processed meats must be made into an edible product.

Playing catch up

All through the complicated journey a system based on regulations and inspections is required to ensure the final product is safe to consume. Jianghong Meng is the director of the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and is also a professor at the department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. He noted that China's rapidly developing economy has resulted in the government playing catch up in many matters of regulation and safety in the food chain.

"There are two big food safety issues in China," Meng told China Daily. "One is issues with contaminants in certain products and the use of low quality ingredients in order to meet production goals or to help the profit level. Another is safety in food handling, processing and transportation."

Noting that China has more than 1.3 billion mouths to feed every day (more than four times that of the US), Meng said that "Safety is always going to be a challenge when you have to provide that much food."

Meng said China offers US companies and colleges and universities numerous opportunities to help the government implement new and in some cases improved food-safety procedures.

Helping relations

Because food safety is so vital to both the US and China, Meng said the opportunity is there to extend the bilateral relationship by enabling the US to teach China how to produce safe food on a mass scale, to conduct inspections with integrity and to develop accurate risk assessments to head off potential problems.

AIB International started out as the American Institute of Baking, a not-for-profit corporation founded by North American wholesale and retail bakers in 1919 to improve technology for bakers and food processors.

The company has expanded to help clients elevate their food safety and production process capabilities by developing and delivering application-oriented learning, consulting, and value-added services. Based in Manhattan, Kansas, and closely connected to Kansas State University, AIB now has operations in Africa, China, Japan, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

AIB set up an office in Shanghai in 2008. "We provide consulting services on good manufacturing practices for the makers of food products," said Fiona Zhang, the general manager for China at AIB.

AIB focuses on the maintenance and sanitary design of facilities, integrated pest management strategies and personal hygiene for workers, Zhang said in an interview. "We do a lot of business with food contract packaging. For example we help a company to produce the packaging that is used for food products."

Zhang said AIB offers on-site training and inspections in China. "We open up a lot of equipment to look for signs of contamination which can be a problem in food manufacturing," she said. "We also provide inspection services for beverage facilities. A lot of facilities aren't as clean as they should be and maintenance and hygiene aren't as good as they can be. That's why we are there to improve that."

Basic practices

Stephanie Lopez, president of AIB's certification services, said safety issues such as basic sanitation practices aren't unique to China. "These issues can be found on a global basis. That's why we provide a lot of training and educational programs."

Gregory Brown is a global managing director in Shanghai for Ann Arbor, Michigan-based NSF International, a product testing, inspection and certification organization. NSF was started in 1944 at the University of Michigan as the National Sanitation Foundation to formulate standards for sanitation and food safety requirements.

Brown said NSF's work in China is focused on water-product certification and food-equipment testing.

"A lot of our work is on dietary supplements. China is a large producer of ingredients that are used in dietary supplements," Brown told China Daily.

He said that NSF also helps producers in China with proprietary or second-party audits. "For example, we help set up audits for food safety in fast-food restaurants," he said.

"Food safety is a huge topic in China and food safety is a big concern among the public. The government is focused on improving food safety accountability in the country," added Brown.

Brown said China has welcomed NSF to the country: "China is opening up the market to outside firms like NSF to help with certification and testing."

In the beginning of China's economic renaissance, the country placed almost all of its attention on exports. But now it is becoming more receptive to imports and food is no exception.

"In the seafood sector China was a net exporter for about 10 years," said Brown. "Now they are a net importer of seafood."

Like consumers in such developed countries as the US and Europe, China's rising middle class is open to purchasing food products like seafood from overseas. "Previously a lot of the seafood trade was locally based and fresh in China. Now it is becoming more involved with frozen products from outside the country that are bought online," added Brown.

Frozen products bring in another aspect of food safety issues according to Brown, including certification of where the product was harvested, processed and shipped. Consumers are demanding assurances on where the product originated and dates for processing and shipping.

"This has led to demand for more certification in the system so everyone knows what went on and when it happened in the process. We provide counseling and advisement so companies in China can provide the proper testing to ensure standards are met," said Brown.

He said most of NSF's employees in China are Chinese. "We see big growth in China and NSF is committed to supplying all the resources for our testing lab in China." In China, NSF International experienced a 4.8 percent revenue growth in 2014 over 2013.

St. Paul, Minnesota-based Ecolab provides water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets. Originally founded as Economics Laboratory in 1923, the company was renamed to Ecolab in 1986.

Ecolab, which first entered China in 1975, focuses on preventing cross-contamination at animal production and food-processing facilities, as well as hand hygiene programs for restaurant employees. Ecolab said it has provided food safety training to more than 4,000 employees in State-owned restaurants and food service providers in 10 cities.

"Our products and solutions can help our customers operate not only more efficiently by saving more water and energy consumption, but also more environmentally friendly by reducing chemical waste and disposal," the company said in a statement.

Ecolab works closely with Chinese food-service customers on such things as the right automatic dishwashing detergents, rinse additives, equipment and chemical dispensing equipment to properly clean and sanitize all tableware.

The push to modernize and improve food safety has also opened the door for cooperation between academic institutions in the US and China.

The University of Maryland's Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, or Jifsan, has worked with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Food Safety Cooperation Forum, led by China and Australia, to hold in-laboratory pilot training for food safety scientists from Chile and China in 2013. The pilot programs were held at the International Food Safety Training Laboratory at Jifsan.

Hands-on training

"Our pilot project was designed to provide hands-on training to lab workers in China," said Janie Dubois, the laboratory program manager for the International Food Safety Training Laboratory at the University of Maryland. "We brought two people over here for training in advanced analytics. The goal is to train them to be teachers so they can go back to China to become trainers themselves on new food safety techniques for technical experts and regulators in areas like drug residue research."

China understands it must provide modern technology and laboratories to improve food safety, she told China Daily.

In May the University of California Davis signed an agreement in Beijing to partner with a Chinese city and a university on food-safety programs. The UC Davis World Food Center in Zhuhai in Guangdong province will serve as the central office for coordinating research and training activities in food safety for various Sino-U.S. Joint Research Centers across the country.

The city of Zhuhai is contributing the first $2.5 million to the center for initial projects.

"China has placed a very high priority on improving the safety of its food and restoring confidence in consumers here and around the world," Roger Beachy, executive director of the UC Davis World Food Center, said.

Contact the writer at paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com

 

(China Daily USA 06/26/2015 page20)