How can food safety supervision reach the last mile?

"Is testing carried out every day on the vegetables and meat sold in the market? What items are sampled and tested? Has 'clenbuterol' been detected?" On February 8, the inspection team of the Food Safety Office of the State Council came to the Wanlong Vegetable Market in Yubei District, Chongqing, and the adjacent Wanlong Small Food Wholesale Market to carry out a food safety inspection.

Yubei District is Chongqing's only "double hundred" urban district with a built-up area of more than 100 sq km and a permanent resident population of more than one million, and it is also an area with a relatively large number of food enterprises in the city. Chongqing Huamu Industry (Group) Co., Ltd., located here, is a large state-owned enterprise integrating standardized pig breeding, modern slaughtering and branded sales. It slaughters more than one million pigs annually, and its fresh pork production and processing accounts for more than 40% of the market supply in Chongqing's main urban districts. The inspection team came to the enterprise's testing room and carefully examined the "Slaughtering Enterprise 'Clenbuterol' Self-Inspection Record Form," the "Incoming Live Pig 'Clenbuterol' Rapid Testing Record Form," and the "Live Pig Designated Slaughtering Stage 'Clenbuterol' Supervisory Sampling and Testing Record Form." They spot-checked pig entry information and quarantine registration records, and inspected the enterprise's pollutant harmless treatment system.

Chongqing, which combines a large city and a large rural area, has a very large consumption and production volume of food and edible agricultural products, and has its own particularities in food safety supervision. In 2014, Hechuan District established food and drug supervision offices in 7 subdistricts, established food and drug supervision offices in 23 towns, and assigned 426 full-time food safety co-management personnel in 390 villages (communities) and in urban and rural farmers' markets, specialized food markets, food production and operation cluster areas, and other areas, implementing full grid-based territorial supervision coverage. Xia Yongpeng, Director of the Chongqing Food and Drug Supervision Bureau and Director of the Municipal Food Safety Office, introduced to the inspection team: "Food safety supervision cannot rely on slogans. Supervision work cannot do without a system, and especially the vast grassroots level must have supervision offices and must be staffed with full-time personnel."

According to Liu Wei, Vice Mayor of Chongqing and Deputy Director of the Municipal Food Safety Committee, party committees and governments of all districts and counties in the city treated ensuring Spring Festival food safety as an important current task, forming a good atmosphere of attention at every level and vigorous implementation. Targeting key nodes such as key products, key venues and key business formats, they intensified risk screening and supervision and inspection. For example, among key varieties, they highlighted meat and meat products, alcohol and other foods in hot demand during the festival, as well as Chongqing specialty foods and seasonal foods; among key business formats, they highlighted New Year's Eve dinners, wedding banquets, agritourism restaurants and rural family banquets. Food and drug departments across the city carried out special sampling and testing for Spring Festival foods, and agricultural departments sampled and tested nearly 1,300 samples of vegetables, fruits, edible fungi, livestock and poultry products, aquatic products and bean sprouts. The Municipal Food and Drug Administration established judicial trial cooperation with the municipal public security, procuratorate and court departments, achieving seamless linkage between administrative law enforcement and criminal justice. The city's grassroots food safety supervision institutions are relatively complete. More than 1,000 townships (subdistricts) newly established food and drug supervision offices, and nearly 11,000 villages (communities) assigned co-management personnel, effectively reaching the last mile of supervision work. District and county governments and relevant departments all formulated emergency plans, implemented leadership duty and 24-hour shift systems, carried out emergency drills and food poisoning response training, and improved emergency response capabilities.

Chen Xiaohua, head of the First Inspection Team of the Food Safety Office of the State Council and Vice Minister of Agriculture, said that on the whole, the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government conscientiously implemented the spirit of the second plenary meeting of the Food Safety Committee of the State Council and the requirements of the "Notice of the General Offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Doing a Good Job in Relevant Work During the 2015 New Year's Day and Spring Festival Period." Leadership attached great importance, work deployment was in place, case handling was effective, system building moved quickly, and emergency prevention was orderly. The city's reform of food and drug supervision institutions was at the forefront nationwide. However, we must also clearly recognize that the task of ensuring food safety is arduous. Therefore, we must further strengthen understanding of doing a good job in food safety work during the Spring Festival period and strive to prevent major food safety incidents. We must vigorously implement responsibilities, strengthen departmental coordination and cooperation, implement whole-process supervision, and pass pressure down level by level. We must focus on prominent problems and weak links and deepen special rectification. At the same time, we must also persist in reform and innovation, explore effective methods and supervision models, strengthen the building of long-term mechanisms, and strive to solve problems fundamentally. We must promptly accept and handle consumer complaints and reports in accordance with law, strengthen dynamic monitoring and early warning of various public opinion information, and ensure that problems are discovered early, reported early and handled early. We must further enhance supervision capacity. Although the city's agricultural product quality and food safety supervision institutions have basically been completed, our supervision team has just been established, with new institutions and new personnel, and our capabilities and methods are still relatively weak. We must further equip the team, strengthen methods, improve quality, and truly give play to the role of supervision institutions at all levels. We must, with the greatest determination and a hundredfold effort, solidly do a good job in food safety assurance work and contribute our due strength so that the broad masses of the people can spend a joyful and peaceful festival.