How can food security be guaranteed? Full-process supervision from field to table

“Problems such as irrational farming, excessive planting, excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and neglect of the application of organic fertilizers are fed back through links such as grain production, processing, and livestock and poultry breeding to final consumers as the continuously increasing personal health risks brought by residual pollution from pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and the like.” At the Third Session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, committee member Zhang Quanguo directly pointed out the safety hazards existing in agricultural production, “the responsibility for food security must be put into practice from paper, and food quality and safety must not be compromised.”

Zhang Quanguo believes that these phenomena expose the food quality and safety problems currently existing in China, such as a quality standards system that is not systematic, responsible entities that are not clear enough, a relatively weak quality inspection system, and relatively absent law enforcement and supervision, which urgently need to be resolved. In January 2015, the State Council issued the “Several Opinions on Establishing and Improving the Provincial Governor Responsibility System for Food Security,” requiring the strengthening of food quality and safety governance from three aspects: strengthening source governance, improving the guarantee system, and implementing supervision responsibilities, and further clarifying the food security responsibilities of provincial-level people's governments. Based on the relevant spirit, Zhang Quanguo put forward opinions and suggestions on strengthening key work to advance food security.

⟦NL> “In the ‘Several Opinions on Establishing and Improving the Provincial Governor Responsibility System for Food Security,’ the State Council proposed that the governments of all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) must effectively assume the main responsibility for ensuring food security in their regions.” Zhang Quanguo stated that in order to put this responsibility into practice from paper, it is necessary to further clarify at the central government level the specific departments responsible for each link of every grain of food from land to table, and to break down departmental institutional and interest barriers to truly establish a coordinated and linked mechanism. Second, the real source of food quality and safety problems is actually the sustainability of modern agriculture. Only by treating food quality safety and quantity safety as equally important issues, proactively correcting the narrow view of food security that simply seeks to preserve output and continuous increases, and treating bumper and poor harvests scientifically, is it possible for measures such as protecting soil, improving soil fertility, and preventing and controlling pollution not to be compromised in reality, thereby ensuring long-term stability in food security.

At the same time, the supervision and guarantee system should be further improved. Taking Henan Province as an example, by 2013, 13 provincial-administered cities and 3 counties (cities) had grain and oil inspection institutions authorized and certified by the National Food Administration as national grain quality monitoring stations. However, compared with the goal of generally establishing a “reassuring grain and oil” supply network in both urban and rural areas of China by the end of 2018, it is still necessary to further improve the food quality and safety standards system, implement a full-process supervision system from field to table, and improve the system for permitting food to leave production areas and the quality labeling system.