Beijing will start a daily report mechanism on food safety
during the "Good Luck Beijing" International tournaments officially
set to kick off on Aug. 8, a test run for the food safety
monitoring system designed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Sources with the Beijing Municipal Food Safety Office said that
Beijing is going to share this system with all other cities hosting
the Olympic games, including Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang, Qingdao,
and Qinhuangdao.
The system will monitor 10 types of information including
production, processing, sales, and cooking of food. While the 12
tournaments are held in August, food safety authorities will make
daily public reports on whether or not there is an emergency.
No such daily reports have ever been made in Beijing.
In preparation for the 17-day event slated to open next August,
the Beijing government has started to file food and drink suppliers
for the Olympics. The first batch of 20 enterprises providing food
raw materials has been confirmed and is under watch.
Food safety authorities have inspected 6,800 samples of 345
varieties of foodstuff so far. The test reports will be loaded into
the monitoring system for reference. The municipality has also
constituted a special plan to standardize the supervision of
Olympics food and drink supply centers and alternative supply
centers, which covers production, processing, distribution and the
safety of packaging and production raw materials.
Between August and next May, a total of 39 international
tournaments will be held, mostly in Beijing as a warm-up to the
2008 Olympics.
(Xinhua News Agency July 13, 2007)