China Food Safety Draft Law Comments
25 04 2008Just recently I asked a friend of my in the China frozen food business about the new proposed draft law that is up for public comment. Below are their remarks which I find very interesting and shed light from a Chinese persons perspective.
As far as I see, Chinese Food Safety Law is mainly for domestic food safety control. I mean, that actually our exporting factories have been implementing much higher standard than the proposed draft law, long time ago. I think the highlight of the draft is the punishment for the producer of substandard food, they may face prison of up to lifetime in serious cases. Also the recall of un-safe food. However the draft only mentions very roughly about the recall. The detailed procedure has to be completed later after the Food safety law officially comes to effect. So I can not see what big changes to exporting factories yet. The only thing for sure is that China will control food safety more and more strict.
China always has the problem of too many supervising departments while the responsibilties for these departments are not so clear. Some times all departments controls one thing and some times no one controls because they think other department should contol. It happened before that one application has to be approved by over 80 persons(80 stamps finally actually showed on the application). The losing control situation has been taken advantages of by some bad guys and they do harmful things. Things are getting changed step by step. Hopefully a more reasonable and effective system will be established and we will live in a better environment.
The above are my personal views only.
Technorati Tags: Noon International, food safety, draft law, China
