Beijing visit to ensure safe food exports to HK
By Tonny Chan and Joseph Li (China Daily HK Edition)
Updated: 2004-06-22 08:31

Hong Kong officials will visit Beijing this week to review the licensing mechanism to ensure food exports to the SAR are safe for public consumption, Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Yeoh Eng-kiong said yesterday.

Yeoh revealed this after Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa pledged to follow up the food safety issue at a meeting with a group of Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) representatives in the morning.

Speaking at the end of a whirl-wind inspection of food outlets in Wan Chai, Yeoh said the government was fully conscious of the public concern over recent press reports about some unsafe Guangdong food products available in Hong Kong.

Yeoh said that in the wake of the reports, the food and environmental hygiene authorities had stepped up inspection of the food market in the SAR.

Officials will also meet with their counterparts in the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQ) this week to discuss the question in the hope of setting up a better mechanism to ensure food exports to the SAR are safe.

During the one-hour meeting with Tung, the DAB delegation, led by chairman Ma Lik, called on the chief executive to strengthen the government's connection with GAQ to crack down on food exports without quality certificate.

Ma said after the meeting that in the mainland, food products with the quality certificate are considered safe. "Most of the problematic food products found in Hong Kong, however, do not have the quality certificate. We hope that the SAR can step up inspection on this," Ma said.

He said Tung had promised to follow up with the GAQ on their suggestion.

In this regard, DAB will send a delegation to Beijing and Guangdong in the near future to explore the likelihood of issuing a "Q" mark to food exports due for Hong Kong so that consumers can distinguish the certified products from others.

Ma said they had also discussed the question of chicken imports, saying the small number of chickens had caused hardship to the industry - employers and employees alike.

"The present import of 30,000 live chickens cannot meet the market demand which is about 200,000 a day," Ma said. "We hope the government can increase the import of live chickens."

He pointed out about 50,000 people were directly or indirectly employed in the industry and the restriction on live chicken imports had make their living difficult.

Wong said Hong Kong was presently short of day-old chicks supply and it would take about three months to put them on the market even if the imports of day-old chicks were to resume by month end.

A spokesman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said supply of day-old chicks from the mainland could resume "very soon" subject to the satisfaction of various inspection and quarantine requirements.

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