Food safety 'paramount' [ 2007-06-22 15:15 ]
China needs to "recognize" its food safety situation and take effective
measures to safeguard imports and exports, a top official said.
"At
present, food safety issues have attracted wide attention globally. Our country
has also attached great importance to these issues," Wei Chuanzhong, deputy
director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and
Quarantine, said in a statement posted on the administration's website
yesterday.
The statement said Wei, on a recent tour of Hubei Province in
central China and Shanghai, China's business center, had ordered local
inspection bodies to boost their work.
That included "building up
enterprises' administrative levels and management systems" and speeding "up
reforms on inspections and quarantines".
In a related development, the
Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday Chinese farm products are getting safer,
citing tests of fruit, vegetables, meat and fish in major cities that showed
more than 95 percent of products were up to standard.
The ministry said
on its website (www.agri.gov.cn) that all meat tested in 25 major cities,
including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Shenyang, met safety
standards.
The quality eligibility rate of vegetables in 37 major cities
was 94.3 percent in terms of pesticide residues, the "highest rate in recent
years", it said.
But there were still a few problems. Malachite green, a cancer-causing chemical used by
fish farmers to kill parasites, was found in some samples, as were nitrofurans, an antibiotic also linked to cancer,
the ministry said.
The ministry this year will strengthen quality and
safety controls over farm products and push for standardization in the farm
sector.
The State Council has unveiled plans for a food safety
information monitoring network covering 90 percent of the country. Food
safety still faces enormous problems in China. Recently, a company in central
Anhui Province was caught repackaging for sale more than 2 tons of rice
dumplings, two years after their production date.
(China Daily
06/20/2007 page 3)
Vocabulary:
malachite green: 孔雀绿
nitrofuran:
[药]硝基呋喃,呋喃西林
Questions:
1. What did Wei order after a recent tour of Hubei Province and Shanghai?
2. What specific opportunities did Wei mention to help with the food safety
issues?
3. What percentage of products in major cities are up to standard, according
to the Ministry of Agriculture?
Answers:
1. Local inspection bodies to boost their work.
2.Building up enterprises' administration levels and management systems and
speeding up reforms on inspections and quarantines.
3. 95%.
(英语点津 Linda 编辑)
About the broadcaster:
Suzann Riddle is a senior double majoring in Health Care Management and
Economics at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. She finds herself at
China Daily Website after visiting many areas of China as a Holland Fellow,
Appalachian's international exchange program with Fudan University.
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