All Chinese food enterprises will be required to have a "QS"
(quality safety) label on their products to gain market access
starting on Jan. 1, the country's quality watchdog announced.
For food products produced without the stamp before the date,
enterprises could negotiate with the individual sellers to keep
them on the shelves, said Bi Yu'an, an official with the General
Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine
(AQSIQ), in an on-line interview at www.gov.cn on Friday.
Food products made in small workshops would be required to have
another symbol instead of "QS" since they were sold in limited
regions. Bi gave no further details about that symbol.
The country's market access labeling system was first put into
practice in 2002 to guarantee food quality and safety. However, the
system hadn't yet been applied to all food products.
At the end of June, some 107,000 food production licenses had
been issued to enterprises, accounting for over 90 percent of the
market, according to a report about the country's food quality and
safety released in August.
By the end of June, 1,276 food production licenses had been
withdrawn, cancelled, revoked or nullified for substandard food
products, the report revealed.
China launched a four-month nationwide campaign to crack down on
unqualified food products between late August and the middle of
December.
A total of 192,400 unlicensed food shops were closed and some
1,253.5 tons of substandard food were withdrawn during the
campaign, according to the State Administration for Industry and
Commerce.
(Xinhua News Agency December 22, 2007)
