International Developments in Food Safety Management and Progress in China

Martin Cole, Leon Gorris and Xiumei Liu

Consumer Outrage over Food Safety

Go to the supermarket today and you can buy most foods at any time of the year, sourced from anywhere in the world. Most modern consumers assume that their food is of a high quality, available and affordable, with little thought given about what it takes to get the food from farms, via preparation facilities, to their plates in a safe and sound condition.

Our ability to feed the world’s population today is indeed an amazing achievement of agricultural and food science, and requires a massive and complex maze of global supply chains. Safe food is a basic need for human survival, vitality and wellbeing, and therefore central to our lives and societies. So when our food supply is compromised, a highly emotional reaction is instinctive; when the most basic of our assumptions about our food being safe are threatened, we are outraged and fearful.

Food Safety a Global Issue

Food safety issues are not new, but in the past they were easily detected and usually dealt with at the local authority level – both in terms of correcting the breach, and reporting it to the public. However, the rapid globalisation of the food supply has led to a dramatic change in the nature and scale of food safety concerns. Food safety has emerged as a global public health issue, as your food could come from nearly anywhere. Large food safety recalls have made headlines around the world, often leading to major policy reforms by many national governments. In Europe, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was established in 2002 as part of a wide ranging reform of European food safety policy in response to a series of food crises, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and dioxin issues, that severely damaged consumer trust in the safety of the food and in the authorities and industries. Similarly, the USA was wracked with a string of highly publicised food safety issues in the 2000s: Salmonella in peanut butter, E.coli in bagged salads and even botulism in chilli sauce and carrot juice. The resultant loss of consumer confidence in the food supply chain was massive, and led directly to the enactment of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act or FSMA (2010) which sought to shift the emphasis of regulators away from responding to contamination, and towards preventing it. Similarly, the Canadian government passed the Safe Food for Canadians Act (2012) in response to a number of scares including microbial contamination of beef and, tragically, deaths from sliced meats contaminated with Listeria.

Spotlight on China

Whilst food safety is without doubt a global issue, the spotlight in recent years has fallen on China. China seems to have experienced an explosion of high profile food scandals ranging from criminal acts (the economic adulteration of food, for instance the use of fake infant formula, meat and cooking oil), negligence (frequent recalls due to chemical and pesticide contamination) to the accidental (the microbial contamination of foods especially fruit and produce). This has led to public outrage, a major loss of consumer confidence, and lack of trust in the domestic food supply. Junshi Chen, who chairs China’s National Expert Committee for Food Safety Risk Assessment describes food safety in China as “far beyond mere public health, but a social issue that affects social stability”. 

China’s Response

China has responded by making food safety a national priority, including a major emphasis on international collaboration and capacity building. The Food Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China (FSL) was issued by the National People’s Congress in 2009 and includes 10 chapters that cover all aspects of the food supply chain, from general principles to legislation and responsibility. Chapter 2 addresses food safety monitoring and follows principles established internationally. These include the establishment of a risk surveillance and assessment system, and the recognition that a scientific basis of assessment of food safety is paramount (Article 16). China’s national food safety control system has also been modernised and centres around a Food Safety Committee, which coordinates and controls responses and interaction from all other regulators (including the Ministries of Agriculture,  the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the State Food and Drug Administration, State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, and the National Health and Family Planning Commission).

In 2011, China established the National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA). The centre’s main missions include risk analysis, risk surveillance, development of food safety standards, carrying out scientific research projects and, importantly, international collaboration. CFSA has also strengthened the national food safety surveillance network in the areas of chemical contamination, microbial hazards and foodborne disease monitoring. An advanced aspect to the surveillance network is to initiate the national molecular tracing network for foodborne disease surveillance or ‘Tranet’. Tranet is similar to systems in other countries, such as ‘PulseNet’ in the USA, and uses pulsed field gel electrophoresis or finger printing and a central database to help with rapid, co-ordinated detection and response to outbreaks.

A revised amendment of the FSL is expected to be publicised in 2015 and will further increase the accountability of governmental officials and business operators for food safety. 

International Collaboration is Key

In an environment of global interdependence in food safety, countries cannot solely rely upon their own food safety management  systems and it is therefore essential that food safety standards are universally based on sound scientific principles and focus regulatory efforts on genuine public health risks. The global increase in the number of incidents related to food safety in recent years has led to a paradigm shift in the way that food safety is managed. Regulatory efforts have become focused on the use of risk assessment tools to drive food safety policy and standards away from prescriptive to outcome-based control measures. New risk management approaches have been developed that are based on concepts such as of Food Safety Objectives and Performance Objectives. These approaches enable the food industry to meet specific objectives through the application of the principles of Good Hygienic Practice (GHP) and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP). This modern approach to assuring the safety of the food supply provides a scientific basis that allows industry to select and implement control measures specific to its operations, and also leads to a better understanding of the role of microbiological criteria in testing.

The scientific and technical aspects of this new approach have been led by the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF), and implemented through Codex Alimentarius, the international standards setting body. Codex is recognised as an international reference point for the resolution of disputes concerning food safety and consumer protection by the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which China has been a member since 2001. The first ICMSF-China Food Safety International Conference was held in October 2004 and the meeting was hosted by the Chinese Institute for Food Science and Technology (CIFST), the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) and ICMSF. This excellent collaboration has continued since then, through an annual Food Safety conference and numerous workshops to aid in capacity building of China’s food safety professionals. Prof Xiumei Liu, at the time with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), was elected to the ICMSF in 2004. She established and led a Sub-Commission of the ICMSF that has translated the work of the Commission into Mandarin and has ensured that the latest principles of risk management have been used in the modernisation of the food safety standards system in China that has led to the revision of more than 400 standards by the end of last year.

Food Scares Likely to Increase as Improvements are Made

The sheer scale and rate of growth of the food supply and the diversity of supplies is often quoted as a reason why food safety issues have emerged in the way they have in China. Ironically, we must expect to continue to hear of food safety concerns and recalls in China as the surveillance, monitoring and reporting further improve. This will be a difficult but essential risk communication message to bring to consumers as China continues to implement the modernisation of its food safety risk management systems.

Dr Martin Cole is Chair of ICMSF and Director of the Food and Nutrition Flagship, CSIRO, North Ryde, NSW, Australia (e-mail: martin.cole@csiro.au); Dr Leon Gorris, a Member of ICMSF, is Director of Regulatory Affairs and Food Safety, Unilever, The Netherlands; Dr Xiumei Liu, a Member of ICMSF, is Scientific Advisor, National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment, and Original Chief Scientist on Food Safety, China CDC