Shake-up for China’s food industry

By Mure Dickie in Beijing

China’s government has called for stronger super-vision of its food industry, saying officials should “grasp well” the task of cracking down on illegal fertilisers, pesticides, livestock drugs and feed additives.

The order from the State Council, or cabinet, comes amid international concern about the safety of Chinese food products, following the deaths of US cats and dogs that ate pet food made with contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein imported from China.

The State Council notice, issued late last month but made public only on Wednesday, gave no indication that the government had any new ideas about how to police China’s huge and fast-expanding food industry.

However, it highlighted a national “Operation to Strengthen Supervision of the Agricultural Output Quality and Safety” that was launched earlier this year and has involved spot checks in dozens of cities around the country.

Worries about food safety have been widespread in China in recent decades, but the industry’s growing exporting clout has increased pressure on officials to demonstrate that they are taking action.

Beijing this week reversed earlier denials and acknow-ledged that local companies had illegally shipped rice protein and wheat gluten that contained melamine, a chemical used in fertilisers and industry. This has been blamed for causing a number of animal deaths in the US and has prompted the recall of nearly 100 brands of pet food made with the tainted ingredients.

The two companies had added melamine “in a bid to meet the contractual demand for the amount of protein in the products”, according to China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Officials of the two companies, Binzhou Futian Biology Technology and Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development, have denied wrongdoing.

In an interview broadcast by CNN, Tian Feng, a manager at Binzhou Futian, said from a detention centre where he was being held that he had never heard of melamine.

While US food safety authorities have said the contaminated Chinese exports pose little risk to humans, they have highlighted what experts say is the weakness of Beijing’s supervision of the food and pharmaceuticals sectors.

However, there was no call for new or tighter checks on exports in the State Council notice.

It did call for customs and food safety officials to work closely together to “attack” illegal food imports, and said inspections should be tightened on restaurants and other food retail outlets.

It will be difficult for inspectors to keep up with growth in the food industry, however. For example, China produced 1m tonnes of canned food in the first three months of this year – 30 per cent more than during the same period of 2006, according to government -statistics.