The Malaysian Insider :: Food

China to introduce food catering safety standard

Posted: 07 Oct 2012 04:49 PM PDT

From June 2013, a new food safety standard will be enforced in restaurants across China. — AFP-Relaxnews pic

BEIJING, Oct 8 — China will see the introduction of a safety standard for food caterers from next year, reported the China Daily this past week.

The Beijing Health Inspection Institute announced that from June 2013, a new food safety standard will be enforced in restaurants, bakeries, shops selling snacks, drinks and desserts, canteens, as well as workplace kitchens across the country.

Food hygiene will come under the spotlight, in particular bacteria contamination, as the new standards will help "better prevent and control food-borne diseases related to catering," an official at the institute told the daily.

This follows the launch of a food safety monitoring system by the China Food Safety Assessment Center in 2010, in which contamination is revealed to be a major cause of food poisoning in the country.

Yan Weixing, secretary-general of the safety committee under the China Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, welcomed the measure, saying that the move will help the relevant authorities better detect and trace the cause of food-related incidents.

Over the past year, the Chinese health authorities have taken more steps to monitor food catering businesses, including making more stringent checks on the catering service sector and restaurants, as well as the dissemination of more information to the public on food safety issues.

The announcement of the food safety standard for caterers comes in the wake of a five-year plan announced by China's Ministry of Health to upgrade food safety regulations in June this year, including the setting of limits for food additives, and development of standards for testing contaminants and other micro-organisms in the country's food production by 2015.

In August, Su Zhi, senior supervision official of China's Ministry of Health told Xinhua news agency that while the country had formulated more than 2,000 national, 2,900 industry and 1,200 local standards relating to food and additives, "problems still exist in the country's present standards of food safety due to the restricted development of food industry and ability of risk assessment."

In recent years, China has seen a series of food safety incidents such as tainted milk powder, fake eggs and medicine, and gutter oil which involved restaurants serving food cooked with discarded cooking oil. More recently in September, a factory in the Guangdong province was found recycling expired mooncakes, reported Chinese news blog Shanghaiist. — AFP-Relaxnews

Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Ahad, 7 Oktober 2012

The Malaysian Insider :: Food

The Malaysian Insider :: Food

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