Two senior Hong Kong health officials will depart for Beijing Monday to discuss with their mainland colleagues about food safety issues, according to a government press release Sunday.

The officials will discuss ways to enhance the safety of aquatic products to be supplied to Hong Kong following the discovery of malachite green in samples of imported freshwater fish in the past two days.

York Chow, Hong Kong secretary for health, welfare and food, said that in the past two days, health authorities had tested 29 freshwater fish samples for malachite green.

Among them, four samples taken from local freshwater fish were found to be negative of malachite green. But among 25 samples of imported freshwater fish, 10 were found to have malachite green.

Because of the possible community concern about the presence ofmalachite green in freshwater fish, an interdepartmental working group has decided to take more samples to assess the situation more accurately.

Chow said the Hong Kong government had immediately notified therelative bodies in the mainland of the test results.

They agreed to step up the inspection of freshwater fish immediately, he added.

Source: Xinhua