China committed to strengthening food safety: watchdog

China will continue to strengthen its supervision of food safety and make greater efforts to crack down on quality failures, said Zhi Shuping, director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the country's top quality watchdog.

In 2012, the administration seized substandard products valued at 6.13 billion yuan ($985 million) in 20,000 food safety cases, according to the administration’s annual working conference on Jan 8.

The administration also launched overall quality tests on 3,421 batches of imported dairy products last year, which covered "almost every brand and variety imported into China", it said.

Meanwhile, the safety rate of the country's food exports reached 99.9 percent last year, according to the administration.

China greatly improved its management of food safety, but there is still much work to do to achieve public satisfaction, said Zhi.

He said the administration's work this year will focus on inspections of dairy products, meat, edible vegetable oils, liquor, aquatic products and food additives.