How to supervise agricultural product quality and safety during the 13th Five-Year Plan period
On July 2, the Agricultural Product Quality Standards Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture held the first "Agricultural Safety Public Welfare Practical Training Lecture" in Beijing. This was a professional knowledge training activity voluntarily organized by the institution to leverage its research strengths. With the purpose of "public welfare, mutual assistance, and exchange," it focused on hot and difficult issues of concern to frontline agricultural product quality and safety management personnel, inviting experts from the Science and Technology Development Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and other relevant units to give lectures and answer questions. The training activity attracted nearly one hundred comrades from the frontline of agricultural product quality and safety supervision from 14 provinces, cities, and counties.
Director Qian Yongzhong of the Agricultural Product Quality Standards Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture attended the opening ceremony of the "Agricultural Safety Public Welfare Practical Training Lecture" and delivered a speech. Director Qian Yongzhong emphasized that holding the Agricultural Safety Public Welfare Practical Training Lecture is an innovative form for research institutions to carry out agricultural product quality and safety risk communication, and is also a supplement and enrichment of the existing agricultural product quality and safety training system. It is necessary to carefully plan training courses around the core tasks of the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture and the main work of grassroots agricultural departments, continuously innovate training methods, and effectively meet the needs of multiple parties, being both down-to-earth and distinctive, and even more importantly, sustainable.
The year 2016 coincided with the opening year of the 13th Five-Year Plan, and agricultural product quality and safety management faced new opportunities and challenges. General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the "four strictests," requiring the strictest standards, the strictest supervision, the strictest punishment, and the strictest accountability to ensure safety on the tip of the tongue, emphasizing that food safety is both "produced" and "managed." Vice Minister of Agriculture Chen Xiaohua proposed at the 2016 National Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Supervision Work Conference that by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the pass rate of major agricultural products should reach above 97%, basically achieving safe agricultural product output, striving to ensure that no major agricultural product quality and safety incidents occur, and effectively safeguarding the people's "safety on the tip of the tongue."
Grassroots agricultural product quality and safety supervision directly faces agricultural product producers and operators, and plays a very important foundational role in gatekeeping at the source of agricultural product production and in quality control. In order to implement the spirit of the central meeting, fulfill supervision duties, and strengthen whole-process supervision, in the process of actively creating national agricultural product quality and safety counties, grassroots comrades urgently need to understand the development trends of agricultural product quality and safety management during the 13th Five-Year Plan, urgently need to recognize the reform direction of the management of agricultural product quality and safety inspection institutions, urgently need to master effective methods for agricultural product quality and safety law enforcement and supervision, and urgently need to explore and apply innovative tools for information-based supervision of agricultural product quality and safety.
Gao Shan: Revision of the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Law should reconstruct the law enforcement and supervision model
Gao Shan, a researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, focused on the overall situation facing current agricultural product quality and safety management, and analyzed the opportunities and challenges brought to agricultural product quality and safety management by the reform of the food safety management system and the revision of the Food Safety Law, as well as the most direct impacts that a series of major measures, including public institution reform, quality inspection institution reform, comprehensive agricultural law enforcement reform, and official vehicle reform, may have on grassroots agricultural product quality and safety law enforcement and supervision.
Gao Shan believes that under the new situation, the responsibility of agricultural departments in food safety supervision has become prominent, but constrained by China's existing agricultural production methods, the institutional arrangements in the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Law do not follow the usual approach of entity management, but instead adopt a product management model for design, indirectly adjusting entity behavior through product management, which undoubtedly greatly increases the difficulty of agricultural product quality and safety supervision.
In addition, as the management department of the agricultural industry, the agricultural department performs agricultural product quality and safety supervision duties under the industrial management system. Its main goal is still to promote agricultural and rural economic development, especially to promote the development of the agricultural industry. The scope of supervision is mainly concentrated in the mid-production stage, and the supervisory tools mainly choose forward-guidance measures such as technical extension of agricultural standardized production, testing and surveying of the overall status of agricultural product quality and safety, and award and subsidy promotion of agricultural product certification. However, from the perspective of fulfilling the public management duty of safeguarding consumer safety, the agricultural department urgently needs to accelerate the reconstruction of a new agricultural product quality and safety law enforcement and supervision system.
In order to adapt to the requirements of the new situation, Gao Shan proposed that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, efforts should be made in five major areas: first, taking strengthening public services as the starting point to enhance supervision capacity; second, taking market access management as the key point to establish departmental coordination mechanisms; third, taking the construction of the inspection and testing system as the focal point to build a monitoring and early warning platform; fourth, taking the promotion of comprehensive law enforcement as the breakthrough point to improve the supervision system; and fifth, taking the implementation of social supervision as the foothold to improve the supervision mechanism.
Wang Weimin: The creation of national agricultural product quality and safety counties focuses on enhancing grassroots supervision capacity
Wang Weimin, Director of the Supervision Division of the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, focused on introducing the important significance, development background, creation approach, and main tasks of creating national agricultural product quality and safety counties, as well as the current progress in creating national agricultural product quality and safety counties. He explained in detail the assessment indicators and relevant requirements for national agricultural product quality and safety counties, and put forward several requirements and hopes for the next step of work.
Wang Yan: Agricultural product quality inspection institutions should adapt to the new normal and make a difference
Wang Yan, Director of the Testing Capacity Evaluation Division of the Science and Technology Development Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, introduced the important role of agricultural product quality and safety testing, analyzed and summarized the main achievements, operational management status, and existing problems of the national agricultural product quality and safety inspection and testing system, systematically explained the purpose and assessment requirements of qualification management for agricultural testing institutions, and especially proposed six points of reflection in response to the development situation of agricultural product quality and safety testing institutions.
Hu Tao: Grassroots agricultural product quality and safety law enforcement and supervision should form a joint force
Hu Tao, Deputy Commander of the Hubei Provincial Agricultural Administrative Comprehensive Law Enforcement Corps, introduced the reform background and main progress of comprehensive agricultural law enforcement, analyzed and discussed the relationship and differences between agricultural product quality and safety supervision and law enforcement, and focused on explaining the scope and requirements of grassroots agricultural product quality and safety law enforcement, as well as the key and difficult points of law enforcement.
Chen Song, Deputy Director of the Policy and Information Office of the Agricultural Product Quality Standards Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, introduced that since the Ministry of Agriculture implemented the "Pollution-Free Food Action Plan" in 2001, China's agricultural product quality and safety supervision system has grown from nothing, its safeguard capacity has gradually grown from weak to strong, and its safety level has risen from low to high, becoming increasingly better.
Chen Song introduced that the main purpose of holding the Agricultural Safety Public Welfare Practical Training Lecture is to disseminate new concepts, exchange new ideas, cultivate new momentum, and build a new platform for interaction between research and practice. Adopting a face-to-face exchange format can stimulate the enthusiasm and initiative of grassroots agricultural product quality and safety supervision personnel, gather a group of thinking-oriented experts and hands-on grassroots managers, and also promptly understand grassroots demands, thereby enriching our research content, sharing and promoting our research results, and gradually driving agricultural product quality and safety management to new heights.
It is understood that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the Policy and Information Office will also continue to strengthen research on agricultural product quality and safety policies and regulations, and continue to carry out three policy pilots: attaching qualification certificates to edible agricultural products for market entry, application of rapid testing methods in law enforcement and supervision, and credit evaluation management for agricultural product quality and safety, so as to explore the most economical and effective management tools for grassroots agricultural product quality and safety supervision. Efforts will be made to advance the implementation of four major strategies: quality optimization, safety identifiability, law enforcement credit enhancement, and capacity improvement, providing technical support for safeguarding consumer safety and promoting industrial upgrading.