Registering all food importers will help trace sources and distribution, and ensure safety, said Hong Kong Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food York Chow Friday.

After the official opening of the Center for Food Safety cum International Symposium on Food Safety, Chow told reporters that registering importers will help ensure food items that claim to meet safety standards and have health certificates be better monitored.

As Hong Kong is a particular place whose 95 percent of food are imported from various countries and regions, it needs to comply with the international regulatory standards as well as the standards of individual exporters, countries and regions, which is a great challenge for Hong Kong, Chow said.

"Our direction is to register all the importers of food so that eventually we will be able to trace the source of the food and the distribution of the food in local retailers," he added.

On avian flu, Chow said there will be increased risks of transmission to humans in winter as the virus will be carried by some wild and migratory birds.

"The most important aspect is to ensure it is not going to be developing into a pandemic or a new virus. The important issue is to identify the cases, to isolate them, to trace the source of infection of these people and the poultry infection so it will not spread further," Chow said.

"This is the real risk that the whole world is facing. As long as we can be vigilant in our surveillance and identification of suspected cases, we will be able to control this to a limited extent," he added.

Chow said there is little evidence that chilled or frozen poultry can transmit the virus into an avian flu infection in humans. Noting all live poultry have been vaccinated, he said the antibody level of chickens crossing the boundary and from local farms will be checked daily to control any suspected avian flu outbreak.

To protect public health, he said Hong Kong pursues a vigorous food surveillance program and tests more than 60,000 food samples a year.

"On the one hand, we need to increase consumer awareness of food safety, but on the other, we also need to be cautious in order not to make people overreact to food incidents," he said.

Source: Xinhua