Beijing upgrades citywide food safety for Olympics
 Beijing has attached great importance to upgrading food safety citywide as a precondition to ensuring food safety for the upcoming Olympics, an official said on Thursday.
Since 2005, the city has engaged in an all-around effort to improve food safety, with guidelines already formulated, said Tang Yunhua, a spokesperson for the Beijing Municipal Office for Food Safety.
The city has stressed food safety supervision and management; media supervision and the participation of consumers in the process; and the set-up of a monitoring network, she told the journalists attending a press conference at the Beijing Olympic Media Center.
Beijing has conducted dynamic monitoring for various pollutants that threaten food safety and food-related diseases. Based on the findings, Beijing has established a risk assessment and warning system and improved the food safety credit system, the system of information gathering, assessment and publication, as well as the system of encouragement and punishment.
In a word, efficient monitoring has covered the whole process of food production, reproduction, logistics and consumption, in addition to a food safety retrieval system, Tang added.
At present, the monitoring network covers over 60,000 varieties of foods using six functional modes, including day-to-day monitoring; market control; information release; monitoring information; statistics analysis and geographical information. It can automatically generate statistical charts and report forms showing the general situation of food safety citywide, producers and distributors, as well as an analysis of demand-supply relations of the food market. The system can also make real-time statistics and analysis of the supply amount and prices of farm and sideline products in Beijing.
