China must modernise its food safety

A man prepares to deliver minced fatty pork just transferred from a plastic bag into a bowl for a streetside stall selling an assortment of inexpensive snacks in Beijing yesterday. China must change the way it thinks about food safety, the United Nations said in a report yesterday.Photo: AFP

China must modernise its food safety system, the United Nations said yesterday, arguing an outdated and disjointed approach may have worsened a crisis over contaminated milk that killed four babies.
In a new report on food safety in China, the UN urged Beijing to adopt a "modern" food safety law and introduce other measures that would help build trust in the government's ability to ensure the nation's food was safe.
"The present system is managed by several laws and an old philosophy that government is responsible for everything," Jorgen Schlundt, the director of the UN's World Health Organisation department of food safety, told journalists.
"We have to change that kind of philosophy because we need the food producers to be responsible for food safety," he said.
The report was issued as China continued to deal with the fall-out of a scandal in which the industrial chemical melamine was found to have been commonly mixed into milk to give it the appearance of higher protein levels.
Four babies died and at least 53,000 babies fell ill after drinking tainted milk powder, and contaminated Chinese dairy products have been recalled around the world, once again tarnishing the global image of the "Made in China" brand.
The United Nations has recommended that China tighten oversight focusing on high-risk areas of the food chain and modernise its food safety system as more reports of world hesitation over Chinese products flow in.
Chinese dairy products have been recalled around the world, once again tarnishing the global image of the "Made in China" brand after four babies died and at least 53,000 babies fell ill after drinking tainted milk powder recently.
Meanwhile Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said yesterday it will set new quality standards for its suppliers amid a scare over toxic milk products from China.
Mike Duke, vice chairman of Wal-Mart's international division, said the company is expecting "greater transparency ... from our supplier partners" beginning next month.
They will be required to "tell us the name and location of every factory they use to make the products we sell," according to Duke's prepared remarks delivered at a company conference in Beijing. "Essentially, we expect you to ask the tough questions, to give us the answers and, if there's a problem, to own the solution."
Wal-Mart will apply the new standards to apparel first and eventually use them on all its products, Duke said.
The measures by Wal-Mart, China's largest foreign retailer, come as confidence in Chinese exports has been shaken after a series of product safety scandals.
Last year, high levels of industrial toxins were found in exports ranging from toothpaste to toys.
Wal-Mart sold Chinese-made cribs which were part of a recall this week by New York-based Delta Enterprises. The 600,000 cribs of various models with spring-loaded safety pegs were manufactured in China and sold between January 2000 and January 2007.
Another 985,000 cribs were recalled because of the potential for missing safety pegs. Those products were manufactured in Taiwan and Indonesia and sold between January 1995 and September 2007.
The recall was instituted after the deaths of two babies.
In the southern Chinese territory of Macau, government officials said late Tuesday that three more children have developed kidney stones.
In South Korea, the Agriculture Ministry says traces of melamine were found in five egg products imported from China.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says less than 2.5 parts per million of melamine are not harmful in most foods, except baby formula. Only one of the five products in South Korea had traces higher than that level.