Guiyang named 'National Food Safety Demonstration City'

The State Council's food safety office named and awarded the third batch of "National Food Safety Demonstration Cities" on Nov 28, with Guiyang city in Southwest China's Guizhou province making the cut.

Being named a "National Food Safety Demonstration City" is the highest comprehensive honor in evaluating the overall food safety level of a city.

Guiyang started shaping itself as a "National Food Safety Demonstration City" in 2014; and in 2016, it was approved as a pilot city for the third batch.

In recent years, Guiyang has implemented the "four strictest" requirements of food safety, comprehensively improved its food safety governance capacity and level, continuously improved the food safety supervision mechanism throughout the entire industrial chain, and modernized its food safety governance capacity.

This has resulted in the upgrading and transformation of agricultural and trade markets, and the introduction of improved "smart supervision" and "credit supervision" systems.

In the agriculture and animal husbandry sectors, Guiyang has stepped up the management of pesticide and veterinary drug production. The proper use of inputs for aquatic products has now been standardized, and a market access system for edible agricultural products has been implemented.

The city also trumpets its commitment to meeting the standards and certification systems for edible agricultural products.

In terms of food production, Guiyang has implemented a credit supervision system, establishing a credit supervision platform at the municipal level. This platform dynamically collects data from market supervision, taxation, and other departments, comprehensively assessing the risk levels of food production enterprises and implementing differentiated and precise levels of supervision.

When speaking of food circulation, Guiyang has improved its food safety traceability system and strictly enforced the market access system. It urges food retailers to establish and implement a system for inspecting and logging purchased goods, ensuring the food quality is controllable, the sources traceable, and the destinations verifiable.

In the catering services sector, Guiyang promotes the standardization of catering units and school canteen management. It further regulates the operation of small-scale catering businesses, conducts online food safety knowledge training and assessments for catering employees, and strengthens the supervision of online catering services to achieve "zero accidents" in food safety at major events.

In cracking down on food safety violations, the city has deepened its collaboration and coordination with the departments responsible for market supervision, public security, agriculture, procuratorate and legal action, maintaining strict enforcement to curb food safety crimes.