China needs more coherent food-safety system: UN

China, fighting a spreading tainted milk scandal, needs a more coherent food-safety system, with unified laws, one overarching watchdog and faster sharing of information, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
China has been swept by a series of food- and product-safety scandals involving goods as diverse as toys, tires, toothpaste, pet food, fish, beans, dumplings and baby cribs.
In the latest case, thousands of Chinese children fell ill and at least four died from drinking milk formula contaminated with melamine, which has since been found in a series of drinks and foods and led to products being pulled from shops worldwide. ‘We see that a disjointed system with dispersed authority between different ministries and agencies resulted in poor communication and maybe prolonged (the) outbreak with a late response,’ said Jorgen Schlundt, the World Health Organisation’s food safety chief, referring to the melamine case.
‘We need to have a coherent system that covers the full farm-to-fork table,’ he told a news conference in Beijing at the launch of a UN paper on improving food safety in China.
Inconsistent regulations, poor enforcement, weak rule of law and powerful local officials and businessmen have allowed illicit operations and practices to thrive with sometimes minimal and patchy scrutiny from central authorities.
Despite mounting international expectations for a food safety overhaul, China’s vast size and complex web of government agencies and product quality watchdogs have long made maintaining standards a problematic and Herculean task.
China, which is currently overhauling its food safety legislation, says it is aware of the problems.
‘For an effective food safety system there should be one overarching piece of food safety legislation that covers food safety from production through to consumption,’ added the WHO’s regional adviser on food safety, Anthony Hazzard.
Meanwhile, Thailand’s Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it had pulled Malaysian-made cheese crackers off the shelves after finding they contained high levels of the toxic chemical melamine, reports AFP.
The Julie’s brand of biscuits with a cream cheese filling was the second product to be removed from sale by the Thai health ministry since the melamine scandal in China.
‘The results from the melamine tests showed high levels of melamine beyond the maximum limit in the Julie’s cheese sandwiches,’ Pipat Yingseree, the FDA secretary general, said in a statement.
‘The FDA asks consumers to stop eating this product and the FDA has already notified the importer and retailers to recall the product from the market,’ the statement from the health ministry department said.
Samples of seven other Julie’s products are currently being tested for melamine, an industrial chemical that has been found mostly in Chinese dairy products.
Earlier this month, Thailand’s ministry of health pulled the Mali brand of condensed milk off the shelves after it detected high melamine levels.