The key to the food recall system lies in implementation

The State Food and Drug Administration recently published the "Measures for the Administration of Food Recalls," which will take effect on September 1, 2015. (People's Daily, March 17)

Food is the first necessity of the people, and safety is the first priority of food. The State Food and Drug Administration issued the "Measures for the Administration of Food Recalls" to regulate actions closely related to food safety, such as the suspension of food business operations, food recalls and the disposal of food withdrawn from the market. Compared with last year's "Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Food Recalls and Suspension of Business Operations (Draft for Comments)," this round of supervisory and administrative measures is more specific and the legal liabilities are clearer. For example, it clearly states that food producers and operators are the first party responsible for food safety, and that a Class I recall must be initiated within 24 hours, fully demonstrating the state's determination and confidence to strictly regulate food safety, and also realizing the shift in food safety from “supervision and administration” to “law-based governance.”

Article 53 of the "Food Safety Law" promulgated in 2009 already provided: the state establishes a food recall system, stipulating that when a food producer discovers that the food it produces does not conform to food safety standards, it shall immediately stop production, recall the food already on the market, notify the relevant producers, operators and consumers, and keep records of the recall and notification. From the principled provisions of the law to the step-by-step concretization and detailing that have led to today's "Measures for the Administration of Food Recalls," China's “food recall” mechanism has gone from budding to gradually improving.

⟦NL> When a food safety problem arises, immediately initiating recall procedures is undoubtedly adding a “safety line of defense” for public health. In developed countries, food recall is an important risk management option for responding to food safety incidents or emergencies, and has long become their habitual practice. From 1993 to 2003, food recalls in the United States averaged 335 cases per year.

Food recalls require government regulatory authorities to play a leading role, but how to stimulate the initiative of producers and operators is also a very realistic issue.

Looking at countries with relatively sound and mature food recall systems, on the one hand, food recall is first of all the statutory obligation of food producers, who bear the return, handling, destruction and corresponding costs of problematic food during the recall process. On the other hand, the enforcement of the food recall system stems from the food recall system itself, which contains the rights and obligations of three parties: producers, regulators and consumers. It is a complete chain of work, and producers are merely the executors of the specific act of “recall.”

However, the premise of a food recall is discovering the existence of problematic food. Self-testing by enterprises can discover problems, but given calculations about operating costs, relying on enterprises to proactively recall problematic food is clearly unreliable; consumers can also discover problems, but by the time they discover them, serious consequences have often already occurred, and the most favorable timing has already been lost. Therefore, food recalls must be built on a reliable foundation of testing and supervision. Yet supervision in the field of food production has always been a weak link. For example, in last year's Shanghai Husi expired meat incident, seven inspections over two years failed to find any problems.

Food recalls are often a cumbersome process. A series of procedures such as returns, exchanges, recovery and destruction of defective food all consume large amounts of cost, and may even plunge an enterprise into a severe credibility crisis or even bankruptcy. Under such circumstances, in which a recall means facing an even greater crisis, how many enterprises can have the enthusiasm to proactively implement a recall? We might as well learn from and draw on the successful experience of developed countries such as the United States, and promptly improve and perfect the establishment of related food recall insurance, dispersing enterprises' operating risks so that conscientious entrepreneurs will not fall into operational hardship because of a proactive recall. This can not only enable food recalls to proceed smoothly, but also help give play to the economic compensation mechanism of insurance, reduce the government's relief pressure, and promote the healthy development of the food industry.