At the recent China International Food Safety and Quality Conference in Beijing Mr. Li Changjiang, Minister, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection & Quarantine reiterated the same statistics he delivered back in July of this year, “Statistics shows that in the past three years, 99%,99% and 99.2% of Chinese food export to the US met quality standards, higher than 99% on average. In the same period, the equivalent figures for US food exports to China was 99.02%, 98.85% and 99.08% respectively. This indicates that the quality ratio of Chinese food exports to the US were higher than that of US food exports to China”.
What does it mean that 99% met US quality standards? How does China come up with this percentage? Does it mean 99% of the items inspected by the FDA? (which is less then 10% of all imported product). I know in our frozen vegetable industry that the FDA concentrates on pesticides, I have never in 20 plus years had any frozen vegetables tested for micro organisms. If they don’t test for micro organism would this imply that 100% met with US quality standards?
I think the key point is, when they give us these statistics we have to ask how it was derived? What is the meaning of the statistic?  We need to keep digging to find out what is the significanes if any about the data.
And does 99% make me happy? Well in the US with a population estimated to be 301 million people, if 1% where to eat food that is tainted with some bacteria, that would mean that possibly 3 million people could get sick. Of that 3 million, some may end up in the hospital and even worse some may end up dead. Is that 1% good enough?
The key is we all need to strive for 100% food safety because we all have the problem (spinach in USA this year, BSE in England, BSE in USA, melamine from China, and on and on).Â
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