A food safety credit system should be put in place and made effective as soon as possible in order to offer consumers a fundamental means of ensuring their food's safety. Such a system would also encourage the rapid and sound development of the entire food industry, said Wang Liming, director of the Consumer Goods Department in China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at the eighth World Instant Noodles Summit on May 19-21.

Since last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has assigned priority to the construction of a food safety credit system in order to ensure consumer food safety and enhance food quality.

Consumers have become increasingly aware of the nutritional and safety aspects of convenience food, and their identification with those products available on the market has weakened. For this reason, overall production has been on the downslide since 2008, said Wang.

Wang believes that China's food safety guarantee system is not yet well established, and the inspection of enterprises, paired with an accountability system, needs to be enhanced. "For inspiration, we can turn to Japan's successful model systems," Wang said.

Meanwhile, the production know-how of instant noodles should be widely introduced to the public as it can serve as a channel through which a healthy image of the industry can be projected, Wang said.