China gets tough on food safety, quality
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E-mail China Daily, February 10, 2012
Food safety has become one of the most crucial issues for Chinese people in the wake of various scandals, such as the now-infamous melamine poisoning incident in which affected an estimated 300,000 infants, left six dead and sent hundreds to the hospital, according to official statistics.
Xiong Wenzhao, a professor of administrative law at Minzu University of China, told China Daily on Thursday that the core issue in the frequent quality scandals is the lack of professional ethics.
"Many enterprises are looking for any way to find loopholes in the country's quality supervision during the process of production because profit is their primary concern," he said.
China's quality supervision departments investigated and seized counterfeit goods valued at 5.33 billion yuan ($ 846.7 million) in 2011, statistics from the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine showed.
Zhi Shuping, minister of quality supervision, said in January that the administration's work last year focused on inspections of dairy products, liquor, meat and food additives as well as intellectual property rights infringements.
Quality supervision departments revoked 15,000 licenses for industrial enterprises found to be producing counterfeit food products and shut down 426 dairy companies.
