中国食品安全监督备受关注

China commemorates the World Consumers Rights Day Friday, to highlight the importance of consumer rights protection. At the ongoing National People’s Congress, the topic of food safety is in the spotlight, after the government’s reshuffle of the current food safety supervision system.

Case after case of food scandals have hurt the public image of China’s food industry, experts say China needs tougher accountability mechanisms to better protect consumers’ rights.

To be a smart consumer in China these days, you almost need a chemistry degree. Scandals involving melamine-tainted milk, clenbuterol in pork to swill recycled cooking oil have damaged consumer confidence in the domestic food industry.

China is toughening its stance. Over the past five years, China has strengthened its food safety supervision through legislation and inspections. The latest effort is the consolidation of the country’s many scattered food and drug safety government agencies under one regulatory roof.

Jiang Qiutao, NPC deputy and expert in food safety, says China needs more efficient regulatory bodies to unify the standards of the industry.

Jiang Qiutao said, "The restructuring still has its shortcomings. For example, special consumer goods such as cigarette and alcohol will not be regulated under the body. And food safety standards, splitting from drug safety standards, will be regulated by China’s public health departments. We believe that might cause supervision inefficiencies. Meanwhile, under the new regulatory body, safety supervision and standard-making are managed by separated units, which might cause problems."

Illegal food processing, improper food storage, and outdated food sales...these activities are enemies of China’s food safety maintenance.

Jiang says it’s time to get back to basics...making people accountable in all steps of the process--from food production, storage to sales.

Jiang Qiutao said, "China should make producers, sellers really accountable for food and drugs. We need to put this mechanism into action instead of letting them stay in words. The government also needs to step up crackdowns on illegal activities. In the meantime, we need an efficient compensation system to better protect consumers’ rights."

China’s law enforcement organs are also on the move as figures show that prosecutions for producing or selling fake drugs or toxic foods jumped to more than 8, 000 in 2012, more than five times the number in 2011.