Food safety, salt price addressed

Departments and ministries under the State Council have responded to a series of public concerns in the past week, including food safety, salt prices, real estate market management, senior high school rankings and the safety of X-ray security inspection devices for airplane and train passengers.

The China Food and Drug Administration has inspected 369 samples of fruit, meat products, liquor, pastries and biscuits and found seven substandard samples. Local food and drug administrations have urged food manufacturers responsible for the substandard samples to recall the products, analyze the problems and rectify them.

The administration also called for halting sales of these substandard items, reporting the result of their investigation to the China Food and Drug Administration and publicizing the findings.

Officials of the National Development and Reform Commission have recently responded to the liberalization of salt prices. The commission said that the government will take effective measures concerning salt distribution and delivery, stocking, market price supervision and market inspection to maintain the basic stabilization of salt prices. Meanwhile, relevant departments will provide subsidies to the salt industry and targeted low-income groups to ensure their consumption of salt will not be affected.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has recently reported cases of rumor spreading in the real estate market in Hangzhou and Shenzhen. The ministry called for local authorities to further strengthen management of the real estate market and strictly deal with "vicious rumors" that disturb the local market in order to protect potential and actual buyers' legal rights and interests, and promote the stable and healthy development of the real estate market nationwide.

The Ministry of Education recently announced that the ministry has never carried out an evaluation of the so-called 100 best senior middle schools nationwide and has never published any national rankings of senior middle schools. The ministry said such evaluations go against the requirement of quality-based education and undermines the diversified development of senior middle schools.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs has recently released the third batch of "offshore non-governmental organizations" and "fake non-governmental organizations".

The batch includes 68 non-governmental organizations, such as international Chinese language teacher associations, among others. The ministry had previously released the names of 1,287 unqualified non-governmental organizations.