(POLS 7050) Public Administration case paperName: Wong Hong Mei Student ID: 10406832Name: Kwong Kwok Ho Student ID: 10421963

How to execute effective food safety control mechanism?

IntroductionIn the recent five years, there are around 600 food poisoning incidents every year in average with more than 2000 people affected. Most 80% of the incidents were occurred because of food business and food premises. HKSAR government implements food control in order to assure and enhance food safety. However, the effectiveness of the food safety control mechanism should be questioned.

Hong Kong food safety control mechanismCentre for Food Safety funded by the HKSAR government is under the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. Centre for Food safety are planning and directing the implementation of food safety control policies, negotiating and liaising with the Mainland and overseas food authorities, and overseeing regulatory functions related to food safety. There are mains programmes and policies introduced below. I. Food Surveillance Programme

Food Surveillance Programme aims to ensure the safety of food by checking samples of imported, wholesale and retail food. Microbiological and chemical testing helps to find out if the food contains bacteria, viruses, natural toxins, food additives, and contaminants. Since 2007, targeted and client-oriented approach has been adopted, which is including routine food surveillance, targeted food surveillance and seasonal food surveillance. Food Surveillance result for every year and month are posted on the official website of Centre for Food Safety for free download. Food Surveillance report most likely contains several parts; they are Introduction, Types of food tested, Types of testing, Overall results, Unsatisfactory samples, Follow up actions, Advice to the trade, and Advice to consumers.

II. HACCP – Food Safety Plan HACCP is called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, which is for preventing food safety problems and ensuring the production of safe food. Anticipation of the problem and the design of the right preventive solutions are two key

elements of food safety problem prevention. There are seven principles of HACCP system for each stage of food production; they are analyzing hazards, determining critical control points, establishing standard of critical control points and the monitoring procedures, establishing corrective actions and verification procedures, and establishing a record system. The design of Food Safety Plan is based on the concept of HACCP. Food businesses are suggested to implement HACCP system voluntarily in order to control food safety problems and protect public health. HKSAR government suggests the food service organizations to develop their own tailor-made Food Safety Plan with six elements included; they are listing food safety problem at each step of food processing, identifying preventive measures and their control limits, establishing monitoring procedures and corrective actions, keeping records, and checking and reviewing.

III. Food import control The imported food that over 80% come from mainland China and a large proportion import from Guang Dong province. The quantity imported from mainland China is around one million ton each year. According to large amount of food depend on importation, as the same time we rely on Customs and Excise Department (C&E) and Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) to check and ensure the quality that what we eat day-to-day. C&E is the first gate checks on the external food import into Hong Kong. To guarantee the hygienic standards of food, importers have to apply the health certificates issued by health authorities of countries of origin. They should provide the certificates accompanied the cargoes and ensure food products are qualified for human consumption.After the cargoes of imported food arrived to Hong Kong, FEHD commences their duties. They are the most important department to enforce food safety policies and food legislation. To start with the imported food control process, importers should submit the detail information and relevant documents of related food products before transfer to Hong Kong. FEHD will issue the Import Permission. Therefore they will carry out the further checking and sample testing.

a. Import of vegetable With the cooperation of the Mainland authorities, all imported vegetables should accompanied by identification tags and pesticide declaration forms. Samples of vegetables are taken for testing of pesticide residue at Man Kam To Food Control Office.

b. Import of frozen or chilled meet FEHD required all imported meet enter in three ways; they are imported through Man Kam To checkpoint via land, imported through International Airport checkpoint via air, and imported through trade terminal via sea, FEHD has the right to require importers keep the goods in cold store and wait for sampling test if circumstances warrant. When the imported meet arrived the entry points, FEHD begin to collect the samples for food safety analyses, including bacteriological and chemical examinations. FEHD will pay the market price of any food samples taken from importers. FEHD will issue certificate and release the food if the test results are satisfied.

c. Import Inspection of Live Food AnimalsIn order to take import inspection of live food animals, FEHD stands three inspection stations in Hong Kong. They are namely Man Kam To Animal Inspection Station, Lok Ma Chau Livestock Contamination Monitoring Station and Cheung Sha Wan Import Poultry Inspection Station and handling various fields of eatable animals. In general, FEHD staffs collect and verify animal health certificates accompany with the live food animal. Also they need to check the animal for any injury or clinical sign of disease. After former procedures, inspectors will collect blood samples and cloacal swabs from poultry and livestock to test. The live food animal approve for sale in market when the test result passed finally.

IV. Food Laws and Guidelines for Trade Food legislation in Hong Kong is laid down in Part V of the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance (Cap. 132). The clause cover general protection for food purchasers, offences in connection with sale of unfit food and adulterated food, composition and labeling of food, food hygiene, seizure and destruction of unfit food. Another food law in Hong Kong, the Food Safety Ordinance (Cap. 612), it empowers the authorities to make regulations for tightening import control on specific food types and to make orders to prohibit the import and supply of problem food and order the recall of such food. There are 36 guides for the food service or production organization with different aspects until now. Guides are for helping the organizations to conduct their daily

practice on food safety problems. For instances, Trade Guidelines on Reducing Acrylamide in Food, Trade Guidelines on Safe Production of Rice and Noodles, and Guide to Import of Food into Hong Kong.

The limitation of the mechanism and suggestions on improvement The effectiveness of the food safety control mechanism is questioned. The limitations of the programmes and policies will be illustrated and explained. And, suggestions on the improvement of the mechanism will be mentioned.

I. Food Surveillance Programme (FSP) a. Limitation

First of all, there is a problem about the sampling of FSP. As every food service organization provides unique food products which are not exactly homogenous good, the survey should not be conducted by selecting sample randomly. Sometimes, Centre for Food Safety conducts survey because of suspected food poisoning case occurred. Secondly, for testing aspect, Centre for Food Safety only tests if the food contains several categories of bacteria, viruses, natural toxins, food additives, and contaminants or not. These categories are already known as harmful to human. The testing is not thorough enough. Some unknown bacteria, viruses, natural toxins, food additives, and contaminants will never be discovered. When such unsafe components are discovered, it means that there is food poisoning incident occurred. It will be too late as many people have already eaten the unsafe food insensibly. For example, the Centre for Food Safety has not included plasticizer in the regular FSP of Hong Kong. It starts to include plasticizer to be one of the tested items since Taiwan declared the harmfulness of absorbing plasticizer by human.Thirdly, the survey reports are too simple. The sources of sample and the statistic figure are not shown to the public, e.g. which food service organization involved in the survey and which product pass or fail the test. No useful information provides to the consumer for helping them to choose safety food effectively.

b. SuggestionThe FSP should abolish the idea of spot checking the suspected food unsafe restaurant or producers. It should be dedicated to prevent the occurrence of food poisoning incidents. For example, FSP can choose a specific food like hotpot soup to investigate. It can check all restaurants providing hotpot throughout the year by dividing Hong Kong in 18 districts.

Testing should list out all ingredients of the tested food. If some strange components are detected, they should be checked if they are harmful to human or not. Report of FSP should refer to the magazine – Choice published by the Consumer Council. The result of FSP should report like Choice which provides the sample list of the survey and the statistical figure of the test, and points out how human body being harm by eating the certain amount of unsafe food.

II. HACCP – Food Safety Plan a. Limitation

Food service organizations are not forced to join the plan. The nature of the plan is in voluntary based. Therefore, the plan exists but not works. If food service organizations are willing to control food safety spontaneously, the government needs not to introduce such plan to them. So, the implementation of the plan is difficult to be success. The content of the plan is quite difficult to be followed. First of all, the voluntarily joined organization needs to train or hire a staff to make an overall plan. The job of monitoring the food safety environment and recording and reviewing is not easy for a cook or manager to do. Skilled employees are needed to perform the precise plan; otherwise, the plan is meaningless.As a skilled overall planner has to be hired, it is difficult to attract food service organization to join voluntarily. Since the implementation of minimum wages, many food service organizations need to cut the number of employee in order to survive, especially small sized companies. They do not have extra capital to hire a planner; therefore, they may choose not to join the plan.

b. SuggestionThe SAR government should consider mandatory implementing the plan to all food service organization by legislation. She may also provide training to restaurant staffs in order to help them to be skilled planner for Food Safety Plan. It can ensure that the record can reflect the fact and be useful for Centre for Food Safety to chase the source of unsafe food.

III. Food import control a. Limitation

In recent year, there are many harmful food delivered into Hong Kong market such as melamine milk products, estrogenic hairy crab and pork. They have common features that conscienceless manufacturers add additive into food

product or feed / inject to food animal, reason to excite growth of food product, extend sell-by date, decreases cost etc. Generally the environment of processing factory is very bad and it cannot export into Hong Kong by legal way. Always the food smuggled to Hong Kong or they are lawless parallel imports.In other case, this is a highly concern as per the imported food after nuclear pollution. Since the nuclear accident in Fukushima Japan, the food issue enlarged many types of food like rice, fruit, seafood and meet. Besides the imported food from mainland China, there are a lot of Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong mainly order Japanese ingredient for daily consumption. Also the nuclear pollution extend to the Bio-chain in world, FEHD are facing pressure for intensive sampling test and huge amount of sample.

b. Suggestion Related to case one, harmful food deliver into Hong Kong by illegal way. FEHD should keep close cooperation with other law enforcement agencies like police and C&E and strike illegitimacy. In commence this is essential to intercept the doubtful goods transferred via land and sea. Also the outstanding food usually spread into wet market and small-scale stores but rarely appear in large-scale multiple store. The annual report from FEHD cannot express the truth that FEHD just consider the targets in supermarket. So the comprehensive sampling test in various markets is a must. In case two, I reckon FEHD has already a professional progress and reach international standard but I think Hong Kong Government lacks the sense of risk. As the decision making, it should practice the urgent measure in 24 hours similar to nuclear accident. Selection that ban related food import into Hong Kong or increase the frequency and sampling number for import examine. When the critical situation occurred that FEHD overload for handling test, maybe it is a possible way to collaborate with international private lab test companies such as SGS, Intertek and Bureau Veritas. It is eclectic method that pay fund but ensure public health.

ConclusionAs every people know, Hong Kong is a small city but population is highly concentrated. Food supply is a major requirement as our personal concern. Although it is impossible to practice error-free policies, Government should try all the best to reinforce the current policies and prevent any harmful food and ingredient imported into Hong Kong. Because this public fault must impacts our health seriously.

References1. http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_fs/files/

2011_food_safety_report_09_e.pdf2. http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201106/01/P201106010169.htm

3. http://www.cfs.gov.hk/tc_chi/programme/programme_haccp/files/fspbkc.pdf

4. http://www.customs.gov.hk/tc/home/index.html

5. http://www.cfs.gov.hk/cindex.html