Food safety of agricultural products requires both good production and good regulation

After this newspaper published a long-form report on the agricultural product quality and safety work of Zhejiang Province (see the front page of this newspaper dated November 20, 2014, "Opening a New Era of 'Tongue-Tip Safety'"), multiple leaders from the Ministry of Agriculture and Zhejiang Province issued important written instructions. To implement the spirit of these instructions, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture recently held a symposium on agricultural product quality and safety work, inviting experts in the field of agricultural product quality and safety, people's congress deputies, CPPCC members, and grassroots representatives to hold in-depth discussions on "creating a demonstration province for agricultural product quality and safety."

Liu Xin, deputy director of the Tea Quality Supervision and Testing Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, suggested that Zhejiang should seize the opportunity, carry out systematic planning around the goal of "creating a demonstration province for agricultural product quality and safety," implement supporting policies for personnel, finance, and materials, and at the same time include the qualification rate of agricultural products as an important indicator in projects such as Beautiful Countryside and ecological province construction. He believes that the key to ensuring agricultural product quality and safety lies in controlling the exit and entry points, among which the establishment and improvement of systems such as production area environmental management, production process control, packaging and labeling, and origin release are crucial. From domestic and international practice, traceability of agricultural product quality is an effective and useful regulatory model.

Liu Pinjun, deputy director of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Agriculture, believes that under the current situation, regulatory methods must be innovated, and big data may be used to integrate testing technology, skills training, safety risk assessment, and more, so as to strengthen regulation of agricultural product quality and safety; at the same time, a mechanism for high quality and good prices for agricultural products must be improved, fully leveraging the market's role as a lever to drive the work forward, and ultimately achieve both "produced well" and "regulated well," with both hands strong.

In the view of Zhang Zulin, director of the Quality Supervision Division of the Hangzhou Municipal Agriculture Bureau, for effective regulation of agricultural product quality and safety, strengthening the implementation of territorial management responsibilities by grassroots governments is also particularly important. This work should be included in performance assessments, and for major safety incidents, a one-vote veto system should be applied. At present, the strength of the grassroots regulatory team is very thin, so in the future the focus and allocation of strength for agricultural product quality and safety regulation must shift downward, increase fiscal investment, and ensure "there are institutions to manage affairs, dedicated personnel to do things, capable people to do work, and funds to handle matters."

At the symposium, many experts agreed that to solve the problem of agricultural product quality and safety, the core lies in fully giving play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation and better giving play to the role of the government. On the one hand, market mechanisms should be used to form a reverse-pressure mechanism, continuously transform the mode of agricultural development, and solve the problem of "produced well" from the source of production; on the other hand, the government needs to improve its working mechanisms, open up the regulatory chain, continuously strengthen grassroots regulatory strength, and solve the problem of "regulated well."