Authorities in Guangdong province should set up a food safety center, which should be responsible for supervising food production in the region, an official said yesterday.
"Incidents of contaminated food that have come to light in the past few years are a clear sign that it is high time we improved the mechanism for food safety supervision," Huang Rongbiao, a member of the provincial committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, said.
"As one of the nation's key centers of food production and export, Guangdong should take the lead to ensure flawless supervision of food safety," he said at the ongoing session of the provincial political consultative conference, which opened last Wednesday.
He said that it was all the more important to ensure food safety in the region as the 2010 Asian Games, to be held in Guangzhou, were nearing.
"The province should consider launching a food safety center that would integrate all forces of the existing supervisory organs, such as agriculture, sanitation, health, quality supervision, industrial and commercial administration, food and drug administration," he said.
Though the current mechanism is aimed at supervising food production right from the field to the table, Huang said, recent incidents of contaminate food products have proved that the methods were far from satisfactory.
According to Huang, a food safety center in the province should be responsible for "testing products, supervising food production, releasing information and warnings, setting standards for food safety and offering training programs".
Zhang Zhijun, a middle-aged resident of Guangzhou, too, believes there is a lot left to be desired as far as food safety in the nation is concerned.
Source: China Daily
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