Decision of the State Council on Further Strengthening Food Safety Regulation
Decision of the State Council on Further Strengthening Food Safety Regulation
Decision of the State Council on Further Strengthening Food Safety Regulation
Guo Fa[2004] No 23
September 1, 2004
The people's government of all provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government, all departments and commissions of the State Council and all the institutions directly under the State Council:
Food safety is important to the health and life safety of the general public, to the sound economic development and social stability and to the image of our government and even the whole country. The Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council have always attached great importance to food safety. In recent years they have been focusing on combating the production and sales of shoddy and inferior food as well as other offences and crimes so as to rectify and regulate the market economic order. They have also taken a series of measures to intensify the food safety work. All regions and all departments have made efforts and have achieved some success. All in all, the trend toward more frequent occurrence of cases of production and sale of fake and inferior food is curbed to some extent and the situation of food safety has become better. However, the food safety problem is still quite severe, especially in the aspects of plantation and breeding, production and processing, market circulation, catering and consumption. There are defects in the regime, legal system and standards of food safety supervision and regulation. The phenomenon of regional protection and incompliance with the law, slack enforcement of law and ineffective supervision and regulation cases have occurred now and then. For the purpose of resuming and enhancing the good reputation of food of our country and ensuring the health and life safety of the people, the State Council decides to take feasible and effective measures to further strengthen the food safety work.
1. The Guidelines, Principles and Goal of Work
(1)The guidelines and principles. You must adhere to the important guidelines of Deng Xiaoping's Theory and the important thought of "Three Represents", carefully implement the spirits of the 16th Party Congress, consolidate the belief of "taking people as the basis and administering the state for the people", fully perform the functions of the people's government, lay emphasis on the food safety work and lose no time to complete it well. You must continue to stick to the working mechanism for food safety - "being under national uniform leadership, with the local governments to be specifically responsible, guidance and coordination by competent departments, and joint act of all sides", strengthen the coordination and cooperation between different departments, fulfill the responsibilities and intensify law enforcement. You must integrate centralized rectification and regulation with the construction of system, integrate strict law enforcement with scientific management, and integrate the combat of fake and inferior food products with the support to the good and strong ones, highlight the key points, and strengthen routine supervision while pay attention to the special rectification and regulation activities. You must establish a food safety credit system and discredit punishment mechanism, lead the enterprises to keep good faith and abide by the law. You must intensify supervision by the mass media, enhance positive publicity, strengthen social supervision and guarantee the catering safety and food safety as well as the health of people.
(2)Goals of Work. By way of making painstaking and careful efforts, the food production and business operation order has obviously turned for the better, the offences and crimes of producing and selling fake, inferior, toxic and harmful foods have been curbed effectively, serious cases have been timely investigated and punished, food safety accidents decreased considerably, so people feel that food consumption is safer and the food credit of our country has been resumed and improved. Based on these achievements, by making unremitting efforts you must further perfect the laws, regulations and the supervisory system for food safety, formulate a more scientific and effective system of standards, system of inspection and testing and system of credit, give full play to the functions of the guilds and intermediary organizations, further enhance the safety responsibility and awareness of enterprises, seek the continuous sound and fast development of the food industry and satisfy the ever increasing demands of the people for food safety and health.
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