Belgium builds a single dedicated mechanism to manage farm-to-fork food safety
Today (22nd), the Executive Yuan Office of Food Safety, the Food and Drug Administration, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the European Union Economic and Trade Office invited 3 EU officials and Taiwan officials to hold a food safety workshop and share each other's food safety management experience. The attending Belgian Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain shared the country's "single dedicated agency" mechanism from farm to table, and provided more than 10 years of food traceability experience for Taiwan, China to learn from.
After the cooking oil scandal, Taiwan, China began building a traceability system
While Belgium has already integrated its food chain center into a "single-track" system, food safety in our country remains under "stage-by-stage management." That is, for domestically produced food from farm to "packaging completed," pesticide residues and veterinary drug residues in agricultural products are governed by the Council of Agriculture, while after being marketed and going through processing and cooking, they fall under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health and Welfare; imports undergo border management by the FDA's regional management centers.
In terms of the traceability system, mainly after the 2014 cooking oil scandal, the government formulated specific mechanisms for controlling the flow of edible oil and recycling waste oil, thereby extending to meat products, dairy products, aquatic products, school lunch boxes, and genetically modified food raw materials with a capital of NT$30 million or more, whose producers and importers must all register online with the FDA-managed "Non-Trace-No-Go" system.
In addition, whether imported or domestically manufactured food additives are all required to be registered online; and after July 31 this year, manufacturers and importers of soybeans, wheat, corn, starch, table salt, sugar, tea leaves, packaged tea beverages, etc. with a capital of NT$30 million or more must also register online.
Will it follow Belgium in adopting a single-track system? Official: "There is a cross-ministerial platform"
After hearing about Belgium's "single-track" management mechanism and its emphasis on product traceability measures, reporters pressed the attending FDA official on whether Taiwan, China would integrate ministries in the Belgian manner. The official only said that our country's food authorities still focus on the FDA and the Council of Agriculture, and although the 2014 tainted cooking oil scandal was handled with a division of labor among as many as 10 ministries, including the FDA, the Council of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Administration, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Education, currently the Executive Yuan also has the Office of Food Safety serving as a cross-ministerial working platform.
In addition to the "Non-Trace-No-Go" system used for traceability, the FDA currently also has 4 systems: the food business registration platform ("Non-Register-No-Go"), the product channel convenient inspection operation platform ("Non-Inspect-No-Go"), and the border inspection automated management information system ("Non-Report-No-Go"). Reporters pressed the official on "whether there are too many cloud systems and whether they can deliver management results." The official said, "When the data is cross-checked, it is possible to discover questions and identify suspicious issues, and then take action to prevent a possible food safety crisis."