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July 18, 2016

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

Mobile apps can help make food safer in China

Over fears of adulterated or unsafe food, many Chinese rely on word-of-mouth to find quality groceries, but officials and technicians say it is time to take a more scientific approach and use big data to address food safety concerns.

A popular trend is ugly vegetables, as many take this as an indication of limited artificial interference.

Guizhou Vice Governor He Li spoke about this, and other trends besides, during a food safety discussion at the Eco Forum Global Annual Conference concluded recently in the provincial capital Guiyang, calling it ill-informed and misleading.

“When I was small, peach-shaped cakes were in vogue. We all went mad for the little red decoration on top of the cake,” said the 57-year-old.

“The decoration was full of additives, but this was taken as a sign of industrialization and was quite novel. However, more and more Chinese are trying to avoid additives, even though many are harmless and, quite often, necessary for preservation,” He said.

Big data could be used to ease the public’s concerns, He said.

Guizhou, a pioneer of China’s big data economy, allows consumers to access food inspection data with their cell phones. Previously, consumers had to search the official web sites of food safety watchdogs. Now, all this information is at their finger tips thanks to the ShiAnCe (“test for safe food”) app, which scans bar codes to bring up all the available data on that product. The data includes inspection reports, and reports by the food safety watchdog. User can also submit an inspection request.

“We hope the software will promote food safety,” said Teng Jiacai, deputy director of China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). According to him, the CFDA has made public all its inspection reports since 2014, involving millions of products available at shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and small stores.

“Next, we will integrate the inspection data from the food and drug authorities at the local level, and data from agricultural and customs departments and make this available to the public. So, it will also improve the food safety supervising mechanism,” he said.

Food safety is a major concern in China, although official data shows the proportion of food products up to standards rose from 79 percent in 1980s to 96.8 percent last year.

The biggest concerns voiced by shoppers is expired food, bad service and pesticide or veterinary drug residue, according to Qiu Baochang, executive vice president of Beijing Consumers Rights and Interests Protection Law Society. “Ironically, few consumers take producers to court,” said Qiu.

The Food Safety Law stipulates that those found guilty by a court of law will be slapped with a fine several times higher than the selling price. Despite this, however, some Chinese continue to sell shoddy products, to their detriment.

In one case, a dealer of fake ginseng went bankrupt after being ordered to pay compensation of 700,000 yuan (US$105,000) to a regular customer, according to Qiu.

In the opinion of Teng Jiacai, the public need to be made more aware.

Apart from the app, Guizhou is also developing a food safety big data platform. Operated by Guizhou Academy of Testing and Analysis under the provincial government, Food Safety Cloud involves more than 20,000 enterprises and hundreds of testing agencies, and has amassed data on 35,551 products since it was set up in 2014.

The plan is for the app to include data from the farm to the dining table, including storage and transportation, according to Zhang Laiwu, chairman of China Society of Soft Science and former deputy minister of science and technology who is involved in the project.

This, however, has its own risks. “When you have a substantial amount of data, security and reliability become major concerns,” he said.

At the forum, dozens of food producers inked an integrity proposal while a national credibility alliance was established by agencies engaged in third-party food safety testing and analysis.




 

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