China can greatly improve protection within three years

Safe food is not a luxury. It is a basic right and the underpinning of a secure, stable society.

Over the past decade, the media has reported on many food safety cases in China - banned hormones in pork, melamine in baby formula, antifreeze in vinegar, and recycled oil in restaurants. The intense media coverage surrounding these cases and others has catalyzed the Chinese government to take action, recently pledging to solve China's food safety issues in three years.

China is the world's second-largest economy, after the United States, and is also the world's fastest-growing economy. This has put China under intense pressure to produce more and to do it quickly and cheaply.

As its economy grows and changes, China is facing challenges similar to what the US faced more than 100 years ago, when its economy became more industrialized. Prior to the adoption of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the subsequent Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, food safety and food inspection in the US were primarily the responsibility of the consumer and not the government.

With no safety standards or regulatory oversight, food manufacturers were often adding whatever they could to make their food products cheaply, sometimes using harmful ingredients. News articles about adulteration of food and vivid descriptions of unsanitary production practices in books, such as The Jungle, mobilized the US population into action.

They demanded that the US government provide greater protection from food hazards. Even now the demands have not stopped. In 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act into law, the most sweeping reform of food safety laws in more than 70 years.

So can China accomplish in three years what took the US nearly 100 years - the creation of one of the safest food supplies in the world? Most likely it cannot be accomplished in this short period of time. However, the Chinese government can make significant progress if it focuses on what the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization define as basic building blocks of a national food control system.

Laws and regulations

Relevant, science-based, and enforceable food laws and regulations should and must be the foundation of China's food safety system. On Feb 28, 2009, China's National People's Congress Standing Committee passed the first comprehensive Food Safety Law after five years of drafting. The law went into effect on June 1 that year.

While this is a very positive step, there must also be in place a system for the periodic review of the law and its corresponding regulations. The review process should involve three important stakeholder groups - the government, the food industry, and academia - to be certain the legal provisions are science-based and continue to be relevant.

What must also be addressed is how the Chinese government will effectively enforce the law. A plan for enforcement at all levels - local, provincial and national - needs to be developed, implemented, and evaluated for its effectiveness. Finally, the penalties for breaking the law must be sufficiently severe. The Chinese public appears to be skeptical about what action the government will take against those who break the law. The general belief is that growing the economy appears to be more important than keeping the public safe. If there is no deterrence to breaking the law, contamination events will continue.

Food inspection system

The food inspection system is a weak link in the Chinese food safety system. Proper implementation and enforcement of food laws and regulations require the hiring of qualified, well-trained and honest food inspectors. Bribery is still believed to be a pervasive problem in China, and it affects the food sector.

This will be one of the greatest challenges for China as it is so ingrained in the culture as part of habit or possibly necessity. A possible first step is to hire only inspectors who have pre-specified credentials and pay them professional wages.

At a minimum, new food inspectors should have a university diploma in food science and technology or an equivalent discipline. Existing inspectors should be required to attend training and upgrade their skills. The government should ensure that all participate in continuing education classes, to improve their understanding of food laws and regulations, new food technologies, and their public health significance.

Food monitoring system

A well-designed food monitoring system will allow the government to make better decisions about the direction of food safety policies. Well-equipped, well-funded laboratories are essential to a monitoring system.

At a minimum, all government food control laboratories must have adequate facilities for basic physical, microbiological and chemical analyses of foodstuffs. According to a United Nations report published in 2008, national laboratories in China are comparable to those in many countries, but provincial laboratories do not have the same capacity, such as testing for chemical contaminants and food pathogens, fast diagnosis of food-borne diseases, and exposure assessment.

The difference between the capabilities of the national and local level laboratories are even greater. Thus, funding is needed to build the capacity of food control laboratories at all levels.

The skill of the technicians and the analytical methods being used also determines the validity and reliability of laboratory findings.

Results from a food control laboratory are often used as evidence to determine compliance with regulations or standards of laboratory findings. Therefore, accreditation of laboratories by an appropriate agency and ongoing quality assurance program must be in place.

Education

Finally, food contamination can occur at any stage in the food chain, so food handlers across the system must understand their role in keeping food safe. This includes farmers, processors, vendors and consumers.

Educational intervention would include providing balanced information directly to consumers, training workers in all segments of the food industry, and training government inspectors.

This would be best achieved if a single governmental agency were responsible for food safety matters. Currently, more than a dozen governmental agencies are responsible for food safety in China. There is no mechanism to coordinate and ensure that information given to the public by different agencies is in agreement.

Different government agencies have sometimes announced different views, advice and actions to be taken by the public, which can only serve to undermine public confidence in the government's ability to manage food safety, and possibly cause illness and even death.

By making steady improvements in the basic building blocks of a national food control system, China can begin to make significant improvements in its food safety system during the next three years.

The author is an associate professor at the Clemson University, South Carolina. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily 07/13/2012 page9)