Noon International: Food Trading Import Export

China is committed to cooperate and improve food safety and safety of other consumer products not only in the international arena but domestically as well. The government has already developed a “blacklist” over 400 exporters – companies found to be violating laws and regulations with regard to quality and safety of consumer products and punished many of same.  In addition, there are an estimated 448,000 food processing businesses in China of which 353,000 have 10 employees or less and over half are not certified or properly certified.   Li Changjiang, head of AQSIQ recently said: “There are many small food manufacturers making a wide range of products under poor conditions. The quality of their products is not stable and sometimes substandard”.  The government is committed to the clean up.

It took the issue of tainted wheat gluten in pet food to prompt the most massive recall of retail pet foods and treats in U.S. history which in turn opened the flood gates of reports world-wide of similar cases ranging from toxins in cough medicine in Panama to toothpaste containing the thickening agent diethylene glycol.  By the way, two companies responsible for shipping the tainted wheat gluten to the U.S. have now had their export foreign trade licenses revoked.

Technorati Tags: food safety, blacklist, Li Changjiang

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Can the new food safety standards be enforced?

Reaching an agreement to improve food safety is only the beginning – enforcing it successfully is a much greater problem.  Why?

• the tangled web of the Chinese regulatory system – not only do we mean  the enforcement of control measures from the central government in Beijing  down to the provincial level, but within the various agencies themselves – the SFDA,  AQSIQ and a variety of other government bodies involved in food safety. Lacking clarity and direction in the past, many situations were overlooked or ignored.  Each province or city made their own rules.  To pull it together now on a national basis will be an extraordinary feat. One must question how the government will manage to implement a special inspection system for 90% of the food producers or control the use of additives and pesticides nationwide as they have promised.

As Chinese scholar Huang Jing of the Brookings Institution group in Washington recently stated:

“We know that in China there are hundreds of laws or regulations regarding food safety, but the problem is that the enforcement is very weak, is very arbitrary and is not transparent.”

• Corruption and bribery – Certainly a very strong message was sent when Mr. Zheng, head of the SFDA was put to death so quickly, but corruption is rampant and that will not change.  The way it is done may change but the truth of the matter is that the more regulations, the more certifications, the more requirements the more corruption you will find.

(From Noon International’s “The Asian Food Brief”)

Technorati Tags: Noon  International, China Food Safety, AQSIQ, SFDA, Huang Jing

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