How Are Safe Vegetables "Managed" into Being? A Full-Course Regulatory Exposé
Shen County in Liaocheng City, Shandong Province, has 166 certified "Three Products" brands countywide, with a certified area of 450,000 mu, ranking first in the city; the county sells 50 to 80 tons of vegetables with traceable QR codes for outbound shipment every day, enhancing the brand awareness and credibility of Shen County vegetables... Shen County has a large planting area of melons, vegetables and edible fungi and a complex and diverse circulation chain. Through sound top-level design and basic work, the county has successfully cracked the problem of agricultural product quality supervision.
Top-Level Design Starts at the Source
The supervision of agricultural inputs is the key to ensuring the quality of agricultural products. As the Home of Chinese Muskmelon, the Home of Chinese Button Mushrooms, a National Edible Fungi Standardization Demonstration County and China's Number One Vegetable County, Shen County's muskmelons, watermelons, edible fungi, off-season vegetables and other agricultural products are renowned nationwide. The county's melon and vegetable planting area is 950,000 mu, and the total output of melons, vegetables and edible fungi reaches 4.7 million tons.
Faced with such a huge planting area, a systematic work plan is needed. To this end, the county established a county-level leading group for agricultural product quality and safety management, set up a county-level agricultural product quality and safety monitoring center, established agricultural product quality and safety supervision offices in all towns and subdistricts, and assigned agricultural safety information officers in all villages. The whole county has formed a county-town-village three-level agricultural product quality and safety supervision system with upward and downward coordination and efficient operation.
With a systematic supervision system in place, Shen County has gained a "sword of authority" in the supervision of agricultural inputs. The county has strengthened agricultural materials law enforcement, carried out dragnet inspections of agricultural materials sales outlets, and launched campaigns to crack down on counterfeit agricultural materials and investigate banned and restricted pesticides. It has also implemented the "Five Haves" business license and market access filing system. A total of 1,240 types of pesticides, fertilizers and seeds from 256 manufacturers have been filed, fundamentally turning off the "valve" on banned and restricted pesticides.
Basic Work as a Guarantee
"Since we started using QR codes, our cooperative's agricultural products have been in short supply on the market." Over the past few years, Wang Junguo of the Shen County Hongyuan Cooperative has deeply experienced the great power of QR codes. At supermarket retail terminals, customers can scan with their mobile phones and see product information such as place of origin and fertilization and pesticide application details. In an era when consumers pay more attention to the quality of agricultural products, Shen County has started from basic work and made a name for itself as a high-end agricultural product brand.
Over the past few years, Shen County has independently developed and built an agricultural product quality and safety supervision and traceability platform, conducting all-round real-time supervision through network probes. Using the construction of the supervision and traceability platform as a carrier, the county has achieved traceable origins, trackable flows and queryable information for agricultural products, and has also met the conditions for recalling agricultural products. Today, the public can query agricultural product information by logging onto the website, scanning QR codes with mobile phones, or calling the inquiry hotline.
The county has also built a county-level agricultural product quality and safety monitoring center, which has passed dual certification in quality supervision and agriculture. At present, a total of 65 production bases, 5 agricultural product trading markets and 126 agricultural materials sales outlets countywide are connected to the platform, ensuring the safety of agricultural products. In towns, agricultural product trading markets, standardized bases and processing enterprises, 105 rapid testing rooms have been established, 2 mobile testing vehicles have been purchased, and more than 8,000 samples are tested annually. Products picked from bases undergo spot checks; only after passing testing and reporting the relevant information to the platform can the products enter the sales chain.