Residents in Shenzhen city of Guangdong Province can look
forward to safer and better quality food, thanks to the success of
a citywide campaign, a top official said yesterday.
"Every wholesale market for agricultural products is now
included in our food safety system," Zhuo Qinrui, the vice-mayor of
Shenzhen, told a meeting to mark the end of the campaign.
"In addition, we have made giant strides in tackling the use of
banned pesticides, veterinary drugs and feed additives at
processing plants," he said.
Each of the city's 620 food production and processing companies
has now signed a quality and safety commitment letter with the
government, he said.
Furthermore, all of the city's restaurants have set up
monitoring systems so that the raw materials they use can be traced
back to their source, he said.
To ensure the safety and quality of pork products, the
government will provide funding for four modern slaughterhouses,
the construction of three of which will start this month, Zhou
said.
The new abatoirs will replace the city's 16 existing medium- and
small-sized workshops.
According to official figures, about 200,000 law enforcement
officials took part in the food campaign.
Over the four months, they investigated 50,000 cases involving
violations of product quality and food safety regulations and
destroyed illegal products with a total value of nearly 192 million
yuan ($26 million).
They also closed down some 34,000 unregistered businesses and
revoked 262 licenses.
(China Daily January 9, 2008)