China's top legislature, the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), deliberates on the draft law on quality safety of agricultural produce for the first time during a six-day session commencing in Beijing Saturday.

Quality safety of agricultural products is closely related to public health, safety and the growth of agriculture and rural economy in China, says Minister of Agriculture Du Qinglin, when explaining the draft to the NPC Standing Committee.

Xu Xiaojun, an official with the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), said, of the total 381 major food-poisoning incidents reported by Ministry of Health in 2004, 140 were caused by poisonous animals and plants. The absence of law caused great difficulties in preventing these incidents from happening again.

Du said quite a number of policies and measures have been taken in recent years to ensure safety of farm products, including building better bases of agricultural products and improving daily food provisions for the public.

The law on quality safety of agricultural products is to provide the legal status to these policies and measures that have proved to be very effective, acknowledged Du.

Xu said China's agriculture had gone from quantity-oriented to quality-oriented since the State Council's decision to develop productive agriculture in 1992. According to a 2004 MOA survey done in 37 Chinese cities, 97.5 percent of the vegetables in the market reached CAC international standards in terms of pesticide remnant.

However, the quality safety of agricultural produce have undergone a bottleneck phase over recent years, manifested in the reversal of safety indicators and occasional food-poisoning emergencies.

The legal absence of agricultural products may account for the inability of quality and safety supervision, said Xu, thus the law is called for.

Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce showed that China's agricultural produce encountered export technical trade barrier in recent years, with 90 percent of agricultural and food exporting companies being affected. Their total loss amounted to approximately 9 billion US dollars every year.

Xu noted that some countries set these technical trade barriers, taking advantage of China's legal gap in this aspect.

The draft law comprises five parts including, among others, defining the scope of agriculture products adjustment, establishing a quality security set-up and improving the quality safety supervision system for agriculture produce, according to Du.

Source: Xinhua