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E-mail China.org.cn, February 21, 2024
CCTV:
The Central Economic Work Conference highlighted the importance of maintaining positive interactions between high-quality development and high-level safety. Food safety is a critical issue affecting people's well-being. We want to know what the SAMR has done to strengthen supervision over food safety and what are your plans moving forward? Thank you.
Pu Chun:
Thank you for your question; I'll answer it. Food safety relates to people's health and safety. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has made a series of important statements, providing theoretical guidance and fundamental instructions for our work regarding food safety. The SAMR has firmly implemented the important instructions given by General Secretary Xi Jinping, carried out the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, adopted a problem-oriented approach, prevented and defused risks, never allowed the bottom line to be crossed on major food safety issues, and ensured the steady and positive momentum of food safety.
First, we have strengthened localized management responsibility and corporate principal responsibility for food safety. We guided local authorities to establish and improve a mechanism featuring a multi-level targeted prevention approach, implemented the system of "three lists plus one commitment letter" (responsibility list, task list, inspection list, and food safety responsibility and task commitment letter), and further fulfilled localized management responsibilities. We encouraged enterprises to appoint food safety officers and directors in accordance with laws and regulations, establish a risk control list, and strictly implement the "daily control, weekly investigation, and monthly scheduling" work mechanism. When problems occur, we can find the responsible parties and conduct investigation.
Second, we have established a robust food safety standard system. The SAMR has revised the Food Safety Law and its implementation regulations, formulated and introduced 16 supporting regulations on food safety, and issued 87 supplementary methods for food testing and 49 methods for quick inspection, providing a strong institutional guarantee and technical support for law-based supervision.
Third, we have continued to enhance our supervision to ensure food safety. We coordinated pre-incident, during-incident and post-incident supervision, optimized the registration management process for special foods, strengthened on-site inspections of food production and operation licenses, and strictly controlled market access. We fully implemented risk-based graded supervision, formulated a supporting checklist of key inspection points, increased inspection frequency for high-risk foods and their enterprises, and guide local governments to strengthen random inspections. In 2023, we completed 7.0349 million batches of food safety supervision and sampling inspections, with a failure rate of 2.72%, a reduction of 0.14% from the previous year.
Fourth, we have combined punishment and clemency in punishing illegal acts. We focused on addressing prominent issues of public concern while strengthening the handling and investigation of food safety cases. The first three quarters of 2023 saw 334,500 food safety violation cases nationwide, 33,500 of which were exempted from punishment, and the average fine per case was 4,900 yuan, showing a downward trend. These figures not only reflected the effectiveness of food safety supervision, but also showed an improvement in our concept and modes of law enforcement, which was recognized by the public.
Moving forward, the SAMR will continue to keep in mind the worst scenarios, strengthen risk management, pay close attention to the delivery of duties, improve the food safety risk prevention and control system, improve the consultation, major accident and public opinion emergency response mechanism, and effectively protect the food safety of the people. That's all from me. Thank you.
