FDA Says City’s Food Meets Standards

Nearly 98 percent of the city’s food products tested by local food and drug watchdog met health and safety standards last year, with over 76 percent of residents satisfied with the security of food in Shanghai’s markets and restaurants, an annual food safety report shows.

Last year there were three mass food poisoning cases reported with 142 people involved. No deaths were reported and the rate remained at a low level of 0.59 cases per 100,000 people, said the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration.

According to the results of the administration’s inspection, the main factors causing a failure in local food’s tests included microbe, Food Additives, pesticide or veterinary drug residue, heavy metal and the use of hormone or Antibiotics. The pesticide or veterinary drug residues were mainly found in vegetables, poultry, fish and shrimp.

There were cases on the excessive use of procymidone on Chinese chives, the use of the prohibited veterinary drug furacilin on freshwater shrimp and chicken tested positive for the veterinary drug nicarbazin. Heavy metal cadmium was once found on swimming crab.

Local Food Safety authorities received more than 130,000 complaints, reports or calls about food last year, an increase of around 22 percent from 2016.

The top five food products residents complained about were dishes from restaurants or eateries, meat products, processed grain products, edible farm products and cakes and pastries.

Last year authorities launched 23 crackdowns on problems like gutter oil, food and health care product scams, antibiotics, banned compounds and veterinary drug residue on livestock, poultry and aquatic products. More than 37,000 food production or business licenses were revoked by authorities with 6,714 food security violations being punished.

Local police handled 136 crimes related to harming food safety, with 334 people involved. Three significant problems existed in these crimes were about producing counterfeit food or using expired materials, using illegal additives like poppy shell or abuse of additives, and taking advantage of online sales to sell counterfeit products across regions.

An annual survey conducted by the national statistics bureau’s local branch showed that more than 90 percent of Shanghai citizens said they concerned about food safety last year. The top three problems was food poisoning (57 percent), spoiled food (49.5 percent) and pesticide leftover on vegetables (40 percent).

Shanghai has 25 edible agricultural product markets which wholesale about 13 million tons of products last year. The city’s 411 professional vegetable unions supplies almost 2.8 million tons of vegetables last year, the report said.