Mike Doyle, Regents Professor and director of the Center for Food Safety, University of Georgia, writes in China Daily today:

“The food-borne disease surveillance system in the United States has become so robust that it has detected hundreds of outbreaks in the past six years that previously would likely have gone unrecognized.

“This has resulted in many foods being newly identified as vehicles of illnesses. This increased awareness of weaknesses in the U.S. food safety net has by and large led to the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will raise the level of attention that food producers, processors, distributors and importers must give to ensuring their products are safe for human and animal consumption.

These new regulations will have direct relevance to the Chinese food industry, especially if foods or ingredients from China are exported to the U.S.. Also, many of the new rules, if applied in China, could enhance the overall safety of its food supply. …

“Although federal oversight of food processors is important, there is a fundamental principle that must be adopted by the entire food industry for a food safety net to be robust and effective. Everyone involved in the food continuum must be focused foremost on providing consumers with safe foods. Producers who are more motivated by economics and consider food safety to be secondary can undermine public confidence and the integrity of a country’s entire food system.

The approaches to enhancing the safety of the U.S. food supply are largely the result of decades of experience by food safety regulatory agencies and the food industry in mitigating the risk of food contamination.

With a national food safety program under development in China, the Chinese food industry and regulatory agencies could readily benefit from the U.S. experience in improving the safety of their foods by adopting and implementing similar practices and policies.