September 20, 2007

 

China conference casts food safety in a new light

 

An eFeedLink Exclusive

 

 

Arranged nearly two years before the current controversy on contaminated Chinese food exports, the China International Food Safety & Quality Conference's timing, subject matter and national host could not have come at a better time.

 

Many Chinese government officials expressed their determination to raise the quality and security of their food supplies, giving numerous examples of steps recently taken and outlined procedures, regulations and policies that will soon be implemented.

 

However, both Chinese government officials and foreign delegates admitted that they face huge challenges.

 

Wu Jianping, Director General of China's Department of Supervision for Food Production, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine stated that, ''China is a very large country and it is not easy to check for compliance, especially among smaller companies.''

 

Nevertheless, delegates from companies ranging from Cargill to ConAgra, McDonalds to Coca-Cola, national oil companies to the US embassy expressed confidence in China's food exports and applauded the speed with which Beijing was adopting proactive measures.

 

While all speakers spoke of multilateral cooperation, many stressed that this would need to be complimented by vertical supply cooperation between companies.

 

For example, McDonald's has worked with Kraft, Cargill and General Mills to see how it can approach food safety management in a more coordinated, harmonious approach, according to Cindy Jiang, McDonald's Director of Worldwide Quality, Food Safety and Nutrition.

 

At the same time, the growing internationalisation of ingredient sourcing, consumer trends towards culturally diverse palates and transcontinental supply chains had made safety a problem for all countries.

 

Frank Yiannis, President of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) pointed out that while most food was once locally produced, even a simple dessert now had ingredients from half a dozen countries.

 

Hence, even advanced countries face challenges in the area of food-safety. 

 

''In the US, for 25 years prior to 1997, 190 disease outbreaks from fresh produce were reported but in the five years since then, 249 such outbreaks occurred,'' Jiang Xiuping, Associate Professor at Clemson University's Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition noted.

 

Sources of American crop contamination include contaminated irrigation water, fresh uncomposted manure, insects, wild animals and farm workers, the same sources that contaminate Chinese food.

 

Similar spikes in food poisoning rates occurred in the EU. Speakers made it clear that food safety transcends the sensational headlines about China and that new trends challenge safety standards everywhere in the world. As rising EU and American food poisoning incidents illustrate, food safety laws that once effectively ensured food quality had been rendered irrelevant by the internationalisation of food supply and increasing cultural diversity of consumer demand.

 

Aside from cross-company and cross-country cooperation, the solution envisioned had two other key components. First, processes had to be redesigned so that quality is high enough to take the stress of inspection. Secondly, IAFP's Yiannis spoke of the need to create a, ''culture of food protection.''

 

Clearly, seeing the issue of food safety in a different way might be the biggest challenge of all.

 

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