China should not be singled out for particular concern over food
safety, a major problem that rich and poor countries alike must
tackle through better regulation, top World Health Organization
(WHO) officials have said.
Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, said the United Nations
agency receives about 200 reports of tainted food products each
month from its 193 member states.
But many food-borne diseases go unreported and outbreaks of
salmonella or E. coli bacteria can take on massive proportions
according to the WHO, which backs "farm to fork" food safety.
"I have to say that food safety is a big problem for both
developed and developing countries," Chan told a news briefing on
Tuesday, adding that the WHO was working with countries to
strengthen their regulatory frameworks.
A number of food safety problems have been reported in China and
have raised overseas concerns over the country's food safety.
But Jorgen Schlundt, director of the WHO's department of food
safety, said China has been seriously addressing shortcomings since
2001 and is starting to implement some of the WHO's
suggestions.
"They are working on it. There is a high-level political
commitment to do something about it," Schlundt said, stressing that
food safety is an issue in all countries. "We are not expressing
any concern especially about China."
"China has realized some time ago the need for updating its food
safety system. It takes a long time to update a system, not only
for China. After the BSE crisis, it took the UK a long time," he
added.
BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease, is a
fatal brain disease in cattle that emerged in Britain in 1986 and
can cause the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
The WHO issues about 10 to 20 "emergency notifications" each
year, signaling a potential international public health problem
linked to food, according to Schlundt.
Most relate to problems in industrialized countries, which have
better systems for reporting disease outbreaks, and the figures do
not indicate the true extent of problems elsewhere, he said.
(China Daily July 19, 2007)