Food-monitoring office to be set up for Expo

By Cai Wenjun  |   2009-1-21  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE city announced yesterday that it will set up an office to monitor the quality of all the food served at World Expo 2010.

The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration will oversee the office, which will look out for potential quality issues and outbreaks of food poisoning.

The office will monitor Expo food from its raw ingredients to the point at which it is served, the FDA said.

"We will set up the system this year to study how to deal with any urgent food crisis," said Wang Longxing, vice director of the Shanghai FDA. "The administration system will work closely with Expo medical teams."

In addition, in preparation for the Expo, the FDA said it would tighten inspections of the local food and drug market this year and get more stories into the media about those products that fail its checks.

Officials said problems with local food and drugs are controllable and not on the rise, but would benefit from stricter oversight.

The Shanghai FDA detected 9,866 food-safety cases last year and fined rule-breakers 23.57 million yuan (US$3.45 million).

There were 17 mass food-poisoning cases last year, which made 467 people sick, an incidence of 2.51 cases for every 100,000 people in the city, which the FDA said is considered "low-level."