There has been much confusion in the past few days over the hair-raising Shanghai scandal involving rotten meat, but Hong Kong families can take comfort that our highly efficient municipal services inspectors are ever vigilant in safeguarding the city's food supply. Ensuring public health and providing a hygienic food supply chain is one of the most important duties of the government because, apart from a small amount of locally sourced seafood, poultry and minor crops, Hong Kong must import virtually all its food.

The safeguards protecting us include checks to guard against preparation and sale of adulterated food, as well as confirmation that imported food is accurately labeled. Health inspectors have the right to seize suspected unhygienic products and send samples for analysis. They can also seize and dispose of the unhealthy carcasses of slaughtered animals.

Their responsibilities also include ensuring the hygienic operation of public slaughterhouses and the strict and clean operation of public markets.

Hong Kong's enviable reputation in maintaining the highest hygienic standards in the food supply chain traces back more than a century to when the Sanitary Board was set up to oversee municipal services. Later came the Urban Council and its "working arm" - the Urban Services Department.

If, as reported, McDonald's Hong Kong imported chicken and pork from the disgraced Shanghai Husi Food Company, an urgent investigation must be held to unearth whether there is a loophole in our hygiene network defenses. The same follow-up should be applied to other reports suggesting that earlier this year products from a processing plant in Hebei province run by Husi were imported into Hong Kong.

On Wednesday, Sheldon Lavin, chief executive of the Illinois-based OSI Group which owns the Husi company, apologized to "all of our customers in China" and admitted that what had happened was "terribly wrong". Lavin added that what he described as the group's own team of "global experts" had been sent to Shanghai to help official investigations.

But how can Lavin or his "global experts" give a plausible explanation for an instruction sent from the management to Husi staffers ordering them to re-label 10 tonnes of old chilled beef that was already turning green and emitting a putrid smell? The workers were then filmed picking up the beef from the floor of the plant's processing section and throwing it into machines to be re-processed, re-packed and sold on as fresh meat.

Even more disgusting is an American company owned and operated this filthy food factory in Shanghai, pressuring employees to break basic hygienic practices and completely disregarding the possibility that a major outbreak of food poisoning could have resulted in Shanghai or other major cities.

(HK Edition 07/25/2014 page9)