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2 China struggles to digest food
safety laws By Hu Ying
Recent food-safety crises have highlighted
the challenges that China faces in trying to
regulate the diffuse food industry. Provincial and
local officials throughout China are facing
increasing pressure from Beijing to address the
situation, particularly since both President Hu
Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao publicly pledged to
improve food safety and product quality.
Despite speeches, updated laws and ad hoc
committee meetings
in
Beijing, little is being done to change practices
and increase safety and quality at the lower
levels. If a lasting improvement is going to be
achieved, provincial-level officials will have to
increase their capacity and willingness to address
unsafe production practices.
Long plagued
by food-safety scandals at home, China now faces
greater international pressure to clean up its
act. In 2002, the European Union banned all
imports of animal origin from China after finding
residues of veterinary medicines in Chinese
imports; the ban was only partially lifted in
2004. In 2003, Japan blocked Chinese frozen
spinach for eight months after finding pesticide
residue in two batches from Shandong province 180
times as high as the Japanese standard.
In
2005, the cancer-causing anti-fungal agent
malachite green was widely found in farmed fish,
resulting in the bans of Chinese eels and
processed seafood products in several major
markets, including South Korea, Japan and
Singapore. Just a year later, China faced new
international bans of turbot fish after inspectors
in Shanghai found excessive levels of
cancer-causing veterinary drugs. The chronic
misuse of veterinary drugs has caused the US Food
and Drug Administration to halt imports of five
types of farm-raised fish from China until it can
be proved that they do not contain banned or
excessive levels of the drugs.
Hong
Kong's experience Perhaps nowhere else in
the world is more concerned about China's food
safety than Hong Kong. Its nearly 7 million people
rely on daily imports of food, most of which come
from mainland China. Valuable lessons can be
learned from Hong Kong's bittersweet experience
working with Beijing and Guangdong province,
through which most of the imports enter Hong Kong.
Prompted by the widely reported
malachite-green crisis, in September 2005, Hong
Kong and Guangdong agreed to establish a
food-safety notification system. Subsequently, a
framework agreement on exchanges and cooperation
in food safety was signed in April 2006. Key
points of this agreement include enhancing
exchange of information, designating liaison
points on both sides (the Guangdong Provincial
Food and Drug Administration and the Hong Kong
Health, Welfare and Food Bureau), holding regular
meetings and urgent high-level meetings in the
event of significant food-safety incidents, and
exchange of technical expertise. Some of the major
progress during the past two years of cooperation
has been made in four key areas: vegetables,
aquatic products, eggs, and egg products.
All vegetables imported from the mainland
can only be supplied by about 190 registered farms
and purchasing stations, accompanied by
pesticide-declaration certificates issued by
mainland authorities. All shipments are required
to enter Hong Kong by truck through a single
checkpoint.
Freshwater fish can only be
provided by fish farms registered in the mainland
and approved by the Hong Kong Food and
Environmental Hygiene Department; all freshwater
fish are required to have certificates to prove
they are free of harmful chemical substances.
Moreover, all fish tanks transported from
Guangdong to Hong Kong are sealed and, as of May,
radio frequency identification technology is used
to trace the origin of the fish.
Eggs and
egg products must carry labels showing details of
their farms and companies, production dates and
batches for tracking purposes, and all are
required to bear health certificates.
Underlying the need to work closely with
not only Beijing but also provincial governments
is the long-standing structural problem with
Chinese government - the lack of an established
legal system.
The need for updated laws
in China China is not short of food-safety
laws. Currently, there are 11 laws, 16
administrative regulations, 78 departmental
regulations, and a five-year plan at the national
level.
However, in China, laws, which can
only be enacted by the National People's Congress
(NPC), only spell out general principles in broad
terms. In practice, laws must be supplemented by
more detailed administrative or departmental
regulations and directives issued by various
ministries or departments under the State Council.
Often new regulations are hastily issued by
individual departments to deal with particular
emerging problems, as is the case with the latest
draft food-safety rule. As a result, despite the
vast number of laws and regulations, many key
technical issues are not covered, or are not
consistently enforced. For example, the
current Food and Hygiene Law of 1995 does not
include provisions on planting and breeding, which
are crucial to food safety; nor does a food-safety
crisis-management system or a recall system exist.
Moreover, the penalty for non-compliance is
astonishingly low - a maximum fine of 50,000 yuan
(US$6,600) is not enough to deter potential
offenders. To make matters worse, it is not
entirely clear whether regulations issued by
various departments under the State Council
prevail over provincial regulations.
Filling in these gaps is a crucial step
toward better supervision and enforcement. A more
expedient and effective way to achieve this also
requires better cooperation with provincial
governments, which enjoy more extensive lawmaking
power than many would expect in such a unitary
state as China. According to the lawmaking law,
they have "advance lawmaking power", which means
that they are free to legislate in advance of
areas where the central government has not
legislated. Ideally, this allows innovative
solutions by provincial authorities in tackling
food safety problems that are as yet unresolved by
Beijing.
Need for consistent provincial
laws Establishing consistent new
food-production laws in all provinces should be an
urgent priority for central authorities.
Provincial laws are preferable for three reasons.
First, they can be enacted speedily and
implemented by provincial bodies that have
authority over different food-safety sectors.
Guangdong province started drafting its own
food-safety
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