Food for Beijing Olympics "100 percent" safe, Beijing official says
22/8/2008 17:48
Beijing's food monitoring authorities said in Beijing today that food
supply for the Beijing Olympics is "100 percent" safe and not a single food
safety accident has been reported so far.
From Aug. 7 to Aug. 20, supervisors
from the Olympic food safety inspection team have monitored more than 1.6
million shares of food and not a single food safety accident was reported, said
Tang Yunhua, spokeswoman for food safety coordination with the Beijing Food
Safety Administration Office.
Catering to hundreds of athletes, officials and
reporters from around the globe during the Olympics has always been a challenge
to the Olympic host cities. Official figurers showed that the Beijing Games have
attracted more than 10,000 athletes and 26,000 journalists.
Tang said the
Beijing food safety monitoring team have done numerous food checks to food
suppliers since February 2007 to ensure safe food from farm to fork.
"A total
of 16,610 samples (from food suppliers) have been checked with a qualification
rate of 98.67 percent. The not-up-to-standard foods were detected at the farming
bases or in the production lines," she said.
"We have sealed or destroyed all
of them (the substandard food materials) and the suppliers concerned were fined.
By doing so, we have ensured that all the foods going out of the production
lines to the Olympic tables were 100 percent up to the standard," she
said.
The official said Beijing has paid special attention to the four
important links in the food supply chain, namely the farms, production,
distribution and transportation, and canteens.
"First of all, we have made
sure that all the farms and the animal farms are following strict standards and
have a strict control and ban of high toxins, high residue pesticide as well as
animal feeds and animal drugs. We are able to conduct a full process tracing of
animal products," she said.
"Secondly, in the production process we have done
inspections batch by batch and had a very strict control of the exit of the food
product," said Tang.
In the distribution and transportation process, the
official said the city has installed high-tech tools such as global positioning
system, electronic labeling and temperature censors vehicles to track the
vehicles and control the temperature inside.
The city has also carried out
thorough training of the cooking staff in the final catering link and kept the
filing of the menu, raw material and sampling of prepared food, said
Tang.
Meanwhile, in response to possible human criminal act of toxic food,
the city has equipped food monitoring staff with fast inspection tools which can
detect more than 20 toxins and 40 dangerous substances.
To prevent potential
chemical or radio active contamination, the city has built up its food accident
emergency response database which included response and medical relief measures
to various biological, chemical and radio active substances and the case studies
of similar incidents in the past, Tang said.
While enhancing safety check to
the foods for the Olympics, Tang said great efforts have been made to improve
the food safety for the general public.
"We realize that only when the
overall level of food safety in Beijing is greatly improved, can the food safety
for the Olympics be better secured. So the measures taken during the Olympics
have already been implemented for the general public and will continue to be in
place after the Olympics," she said.
Xinhua
|
