Reducing food safety risks to be big challenge
0 
"Whenever a new chemical comes up we spend a lot of time analyzing the risk and finding ways to reduce it," Hong Kong's health chief York Chow told Xinhua in a recent interview, adding this has become a main challenge to the city in tackling food safety crises.
The plastic additive Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) incident emerged recently in Taiwan has urged regions around including Hong Kong to carry out a string of recalls and tests on drinks suspected to be polluted.
DEHP is not expected in food and the addition of it into food is not approved by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Chow said there were many unknown factors about the chemical when it was first detected in food. To prevent it from having serious impact on the public, the city's government has to act swiftly.
"We get notified immediately and we start to take samples from our retailers," the city's Secretary for Food and Health said, adding "in fact, we are the first government outside Taiwan that actually imposes a ban on the drinks."
Hong Kong's Center for Food Safety (CFS) announced on Friday the inclusion of DEHP in the routine surveillance of prepackaged food produced with clouding agents. Food items containing the chemical which exceeds the limit of 1.5mg/kg will be banned.
In regard to the outbreak of Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli infection in Europe, another drastic hygienic issue arose lately suspected to be originated from vegetables cultivated in the region, CFS Friday said that it set up close contact with the WHO and health authorities related to monitor the situation, and stepped up surveillance at both import and retail levels on vegetables imported from European countries.
Monitoring closely the health safety of all food around the world is one of the many keys to ensure food safety, and informing the public as soon as possible is also important. "The earlier we let our public knows, the earlier they can be assured whether they need to stop eating or stop purchasing those items,"Chow added.
As many as 95 percent of the food comes from the outside of the city. So that Hong Kong put much emphasis on food testing with the CFS testing 70,000 samples every year and the overall satisfactory rate went over 99 percent in recent years.
In addition to food testing and food recall, a reliable tracing mechanism can further protect the public's health in case of crisis. In March, 2011, Hong Kong legislators passed a food safety bill to ensure the importers are being registered and all the importers distribute sellers and retailers are also keeping record of the transaction.
"We can always follow the track, then we will trace where they comes from,"Chow said, adding that this will help the government to narrow down the problems and making it much easier to control and reduce the damage done to the product.
Chow, who is also an orthopaedic surgeon, has become the city's top health official since 2004 and is much experienced in dealing with food safety problems. He takes pleasure in the job which allows him to help safeguarding people's health despite the great pressure. "The job is a meaningful one since enabling people to lead a healthy life is our primary goal,"he said.
He believed that ceaseless innovations in system and technology can help the government better cope with new challenges regarding the work of food surveillance, which can be done by putting resources to develop the technical ability of the city's laboratories.
