The key to ensuring agricultural product quality and safety lies in strictly abiding by the safety law
Agricultural information. In recent years, the Ministry of Agriculture has resolutely implemented the Law on the Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products and the Food Safety Law, working on both the development of the inspection and testing system and the deepening of monitoring work, effectively enhancing the regulatory capacity for agricultural product quality and safety. Monitoring results show that, based on the same statistical criteria as 2008, the qualification rates for vegetables, livestock and poultry products, and aquatic products for the full year of 2009 were 96.4%, 99.5%, and 97.2% respectively. The quality and safety level of agricultural products in China has risen steadily, with the overall situation improving. At present, 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and cities with independent planning status across the country have established monitoring systems. Through improving the mechanisms for summarizing and analyzing monitoring data and early warning, establishing a consultation mechanism for the quality and safety situation, and forming a system that separates sampling inspection from enforcement and links inspection with enforcement, unqualified agricultural products have been preliminarily prevented from entering the market.
China's agricultural product quality and safety monitoring work began in 2001. At present, in provincial capitals and major agricultural production areas across the country, a quality and safety monitoring system for agricultural products is widely implemented, covering key agricultural products and agricultural inputs at the stages of production sites, wholesale markets, and supermarkets, through routine monitoring, general surveys, and supervisory spot checks. The key tasks are as follows: First, continuously deepening routine monitoring. In 2009, the types of monitored products increased from 4 categories to 10 categories, the parameters increased from 30 items to 68 items, and the scope expanded from 36 to 259 large and medium-sized cities. As of the end of 2009, a total of 115,000 vegetable samples, 70,000 livestock product samples, and 20,000 aquatic product samples had been tested, yielding 2.25 million valid data entries. Second, solidly carrying out general surveys of hidden risks in agricultural product quality and safety. Since 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture has conducted quality and safety general surveys on more than 10 types of agricultural products and agricultural inputs each year, obtaining hundreds of thousands of traceable basic data entries. Third, strengthening supervisory spot checks and law enforcement penalties. Since the promulgation and implementation of the Law on the Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products, in conjunction with special rectification efforts, a total of 10 relatively large-scale supervisory spot checks have been carried out, with nearly 30,000 samples inspected, covering vegetables, fruits, edible fungi, pig products, chicken, poultry eggs, and aquatic products.
In 2007, the Ministry of Agriculture launched and implemented the National Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Inspection and Testing System Development Plan. Since the implementation of the plan, a total of 507 agricultural product quality and safety inspection and testing institutions at all levels have been established, the total number of quality inspection institutions has reached 2,228, and the number of detectable agricultural product parameters has reached more than 36,000. A testing network system with distinct emphases at the ministry, provincial, prefectural, and county levels, mutually complementary, has taken initial shape.