China to upgrade Health Ministry to better monitor food, drug safety

BEIJING—China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) will be put under the Ministry of Health (MOH) as part of the cabinet restructuring reform to better monitor the country’s food and drug safety.
The reform plan was announced by State Councilor Hua Jianmin here on Tuesday, also secretary general of the cabinet, to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature. The new MOH will be authorized to coordinate food safety management, organize investigations into serious food safety incidents and give due punishment, Hua said.
He said the MOH is also responsible for the constitution of the national food safety standards, the pharmaceutical code and a state basic pharmaceutical system. The SFDA, after the reform, is responsible for food sanitation permit and monitoring of food and eatery businesses. The administration shall also monitor drug safety, including the process of research, production, circulation and use.
The Chinese government has come under great pressure to overhaul the country’s food and drug safety system after a series of controversies caused by shoddy products, tainted food and corruption scandals over recent years, which sometimes led to international disputes in addition to poisoning or even deaths of people. Figures from the MOH showed that food poisoning, ranging from vegetables with pesticide residue to fish contaminated with suspected carcinogens and eggs tainted with industrial dyes, claimed 258 lives last year, up 31.6 percent year-on-year.
Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of SFDA, set up in 2003 as a new cabinet agency, was executed in July last year for taking more than 6.5 million yuan (900,000 U.S. dollars) in bribes to give approval to new drugs. “The reform plan will further promote the role of the SFDA to oversee the nation’s drug safety in the process of production, circulation and use,” said Shao Mingli, head of the SFDA, applauding the reform plan.
China is to elevate the status of the State Environmental Protection Administration to a ministry, which is among the major 27 ministries and commissions of the Cabinet, said Hua Jianmin, secretary-general of the State Council, on Tuesday. “Environmental protection is the fundamental policy of our country, and is crucial to the existence and development of the Chinese nation,” Hua, also a State Councilor, said in an explanation of a government reshuffle plan at the ongoing parliamentary session.
China will face the severe challenge of environmental protection for a long time to come, with the arduous task of reducing pollutants, he noted. The new ministry aims “to step up environmental improvement and ecological protection and accelerate the building of a resource-saving and environment-friendly society,” said Hua.
He added the ministry is responsible for drafting and implementing programs, policies and standards concerning environmental protection, working out environmental functions in different regions, supervising pollution prevention and treatment, and tackling major environmental issues. The change is welcomed by deputies to the National People’s Congress. “It is really exciting,” said Huang Xinhua, vice director of the environmental protection bureau of Huizhou, Guangdong province.
“The environmental protection work of China will have more room for improvement,” she said. “This elevation shows the government has become more concerned with environmental protection,” said Wei Fusheng, academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Environmental protection has been highlighted in recent years, as China’s economic miracle has brought in its wake severe challenges to the environment. In 2006, China missed the pollution control goals of cutting two main pollutants by two percent. In 2007, for the first time in recent years, the country reported a fall in both chemical oxygen demand, a main index of water pollution, and the total emission of sulphur dioxide, a main air pollutant, because of tightened pollution control.—Xinhua