(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-17 21:37

China has stepped up nationwide monitoring on food workshops with fewer than ten employees to ensure food quality and safety, said a white paper issued on Friday.

The white paper, issued by the Information Office of China's State Council, is the first of its kind on China's food safety.

At present, these food workshops pose the most difficult problem for ensuring food quality and safety, said the white paper, adding that regional differences and disparities between urban and rural areas in China make the supervision of food workshops a "prolonged and arduous task".

The paper said the government has tried to upgrade them to the market-access requirements by means of shutdown, stoppage of production, merging or changing line of business and have taken more stringent supervisory measures to prevent food safety accidents.

After rectifications, the average acceptance rate in sample surveys of food workshops rose to 70.4 percent in 2006. By the end of June 2007, 5,631 workshops had been closed down, 8,814 had been made to suspend production, and 5,385 had reached the requirements after rectification.

Currently China has 448,000 enterprises engaged in foodstuff production and processing and 353,000 of them are small businesses or workshops with less than ten employees, according to the paper.

"The Chinese government has always attached great importance to food quality and safety," the paper said.