Opinion

Making food safe

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-07 10:53

Top food safety officials admitted on Thursday that a lot needed to be done to meet people's expectations. The message is that the food safety system needs to be fixed.

An official of the State Council Food Safety Commission said the chain to guarantee food safety was very long and comprised many departments whose responsibilities were not clearly defined. He admitted, too, that at times some food safety watchdogs bend the law for personal gains.

Though he claimed that the overall food safety situation was stable, repeated press conferences organized by the State Council speak volumes of the importance the central government attaches to food safety and show that a lot more can be done.

A Supreme People's Procuratorate notice, issued on Tuesday, calls for strict implementation of the latest Criminal Law amendment that took effect on May 1. The amendment included two more food safety crimes: abuse of power in supervision and inspection, and dereliction of duty.

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The notice says that prosecutors should lay emphasis on investigations into cases in which quarantine and inspection workers have flouted the law or did not fulfill their duty. Food safety watchdogs can face criminal charges and be jailed for dereliction of duty or turning a blind eye to production and distribution of unsafe food.

Criminal penalty has been long overdue for food safety watchdogs that fail in their responsibility or take bribes to let contaminated or adulterated food enter the market.

A crackdown on unsafe food producers alone cannot free us from the scourge. Lack of supervision or lax control has actually encouraged food producers to add harmful chemicals to food products to make them look better or weigh more so that they can earn more profit. Food safety officials who take bribes from food producers to allow unsafe products to enter the market see unsafe food as a source of making an extra buck. All these have made it difficult for officials to crack cases involving producers of tainted food.

No wonder, the media rather than food safety watchdogs have exposed most of such cases.

The inclusion of two more crimes in the amended Criminal Law may have made it possible for prosecutors to incriminate food safety watchdogs, but that does not necessarily mean that all food quarantine and inspection officials will be deterred from taking bribes or slackening their efforts. Nor does it mean that every official who flouts the law or fails to fulfill his/her duty will be brought to justice.

It will take time for the law to be implemented in letter and spirit. Hopefully, the importance the central government attaches to the problem will help fix the food safety mechanism so that no criminal act is allowed to go unpunished.