Nanning, China - To minimize the possibility of disputes over food safety, ASEAN and China have launched their first-ever ministerial-level meeting on the issue and reached agreement on areas of common understanding.
"During this meeting, we reached a general agreement that communication of legal requirements, and exchanges and cooperation should be undertaken in the area of laws and regulations, as well as standards," China‘s minister for administration of quality supervision and quarantine (AQSIQ), Li Chang Jiang, said Tuesday in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, China.
"This means that a common effort should be made so that our standards are consistent with the international standards," Li said.
The event, which was titled "Strengthen Import and Export Food Safety Management and Cooperation, Protect Consumer‘s Rights and Benefits", lasted from Sunday to Monday and was held in conjunction with the fourth China-ASEAN Expo.
Country representatives agreed on a number of points: to strengthen cooperation and communication of food safety regulations and standards, to improve food safety management and technical assurance capabilities, and to promptly transmit any new food safety and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures through designated contact points.
The representatives, who mainly comprised senior food-safety authority officials, also agreed to strengthen cooperation to combat the illegal food trade and to hold meetings at least once every two years.
However, the director of Indonesia‘s Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM), Husniah Rubiana, said that the points agreed on at the meeting were not yet binding as the actual MoU on food safety would be signed at the ASEAN plus one meeting in Singapore early next month.
"Unlike AQSIQ, BPOM is not the sole authority responsible for food safety as this is shared with the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry and the Agriculture Quarantine Board. So, we cannot sign any MoU here," she said.
On the disputes over food safety between the two countries, which started in early August with Indonesia banning dozens of "hazardous" candy and sweet products from China, followed by China banning Indonesian fish products, Husniah only said that definitive conclusions would be arrived at shortly.
"As you know, we are trying to reach common ground on the standards we use to defining ‘hazardous‘."
ASEAN Secretary-General Vice Chairman Nicholas Tandi Dammen said technical assistance cooperation between ASEAN and China was needed to bridge the differences in food safety standards.
"I hope China will be able to provide technical assistance for its counterparts in ASEAN so that it can contribute to the effort to ensure effective supervision and management of products in each country," he said.
Meanwhile, Li further said during the course of the meeting that talks with Indonesia and the Philippines, which has also banned candy and confectionery products from China, were still underway, although all involved agreed on the need for stronger collaboration in the future.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com (1 November 2007)
