Mar 14 2008
how likely is a unified food safety standard? i don’t see it happening soon.
China Retail News reported last week on that a number of large corporations, including Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Pepsi, are calling on the Chinese government for unified food safety standards. The article says:
In a seminar held by China National Food Industry Association for discussing the draft of Food Hygiene Law, thirty food enterprises, including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Wuliangye, Yili, Guangming and Yanjing Beer, called for the launching of unified food safety standards.
With regards to the food safety situation, China has already started to enact a Food Hygiene Law and has made positive progress. An anonymous representative of a company told First Financial Daily that it would be a great challenge for big food enterprises if their food safety is not improved.
Ma Yong, vice secretary general of China National Food Industry Association, says that at present, national, local and company standards are implemented at the same time, which causes confusion in the supervision of food safety. Therefore, enterprises suggest launching unified food safety standards and unified testing standards.
In the wake of so many faux pas for products safety internationally, I am not terribly surprised at this development. We’ve seen the gamut of interesting developments: China’s SFDA passing the buck here, Companies like Toys ‘R Us doing their own safety inspections here, and straight-up boycotts by those like Trader Joe’s here. And of course, China has not been immune to food safety issues domestically.
It’s about time that the companies jointly urged the government to act in such a way. (I assume that such standards would be domestic and of course, have some ramifications for international trade as well)
Now the hard question is this: will it happen? I just don’t see it happening soon. To have Chinese national, local and company standards converging? There are enough problems between the Chinese central government and the local provinces not getting along and the power struggle between them. That would be hard enough as is. And won’t happen in the near future. There is just no way. But to also get private companies on board with a joint government effort? Wow. Call me a cynic, but not anytime soon. Yes, perhaps in the future, but I really don’t see this one happening in the next 2-3 years, maybe even 5 years.
Just my 2 cents.
