China’s 3 Major Food Safety Risks Revealed

China has revealed microbial contamination, excessive food additives and excessive drug residues to be the major food safety challenges that the country is facing, based on data from the government-administered 2019 National Food Safety Inspections  reports the FoodNavigator-Asia on June 22.  The results were announced by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) earlier this month at a public event and later in a follow up formal statement.  

“In 2019, the SAMR (tested) food samples from 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, completing a total of some 244,000 ramdom food safety batch tests covering 33 categories,” said SAMR.  They tested 558 indicators, including microorganisms, agricultural and veterinary drug residues, food additives, biotoxins, heavy metals and other national food safety indicators, and analysis has revealed an overall passing rate of 97.6% (238,000) which is the same as the previous year and maintained at 2.9% increase from 2014. 

Those that got high passing rate were: meat products (97% pass rate), processed foods (98.8%), edible oil (98.9%), egg productcs (99.5%), dairy products (99.6%), and infant formula (99.9%) maintaining similar levels as in 2018.  The agency considered these results to demonstrate the food safety environment in China as ‘stable and positive’ but acknowledged that many problems still remain.