"There are not enough varieties of food additives in China," said Sun Baoguo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, at the "Scientists and the Media Face to Face" event at the 2015 International Food Safety Conference. As a "heavyweight" expert in China's food additive industry, Sun Baoguo attends every event to "correct the name" of the additive. But this year, he had to admit that everyone's cognition of food additives has moved toward science and rationality, and has realized that there is no modern food industry without food additives. However, consumer fear of food additives has not been completely eliminated.

Not only food additives, raw material contamination, food fraud, recall systems and traceability from field to table are all topics of concern to consumers. In response to these hot spots, from April 22 to 23, the China Society of Food Science and Technology held the 2015 International Food Safety Conference in Beijing, where dozens of experts from both international and domestic countries worked together to answer questions for consumers.

Contamination of raw materials is a big risk

Regulation has been extended to the source

In August last year, Evergrande Group, which started by producing mineral water, not only announced its entry into the dairy industry, but also expanded its business scope to animal husbandry, grain and oil industry; As a leader in the frozen food industry, Sanquan Food has also extended its "tentacles" upstream to raw materials, and its business even includes many fields such as breeding, planting and feed processing; Horqin cattle industry not only cattle, processing, sales, but also planting corn stalks... More and more domestic food production enterprises began to develop the whole industrial chain. But in fact, due to the large investment, high risk, slow effect and low profit of this development model, it is also very rare in foreign countries.

During the interview, Liu Meiju, vice chairman and secretary general of the China Dairy Industry Association, sighed, "It is difficult to do enterprises, it is more difficult to do food enterprises, and it is even more difficult to do dairy enterprises." "Companies invest so much energy and cost to ensure food safety and quality control from the source."

On the 23rd, at the sub-forum of "Food industry Chain Safety and Control" of this conference, a participant engaged in quality assurance work in instant noodle manufacturers admitted that the upstream raw materials were not guaranteed, and the downstream food safety problems were difficult to solve.

Meng Suhe, director general of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology, and Chen Junshi, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, share similar views. Meng Suhe told reporters that from 2014 to 2015, one of the risks and challenges facing China's food safety is that food safety risks are moving forward, raw material pollution is a big risk, and agriculture-related enterprises have become a new round of "high-risk groups" that are concerned by public opinion, but it is difficult to effectively resolve in the short term.

Meng Suhe analysis, in addition to the food safety risk forward, the main risks and challenges faced by China's food safety from 2014 to 2015 are: food fraud has become a cancer in the food industry, the past two years to malicious addition, resulting in death of malignant safety accidents have been greatly reduced, but bad instead of good, fake food fraud safety incidents continue to appear; In addition, with the rapid increase of China's food raw material imports, the supply chain raw material sources are complicated, and the management is more difficult; The intensity of risk communication and public popularization is still weak, and there is still a large error between scientists and consumers.

Chen Junshi, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and researcher of the Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, believes that in order to ensure the food quality and safety of the whole industry chain, the actions of leading enterprises need to extend upward and downstream. In addition, he also said in his speech at the conference, "The reform of the government regulatory system is gradually advancing, but the reform of the regulatory model has a long way to go." The current regulatory model, which is based on sampling testing, is both ineffective and expensive, and must be changed to focus on process monitoring."

As it said, two days before the conference, the draft revision of the food safety Law that has received attention from all walks of life has entered the third trial, adding that "highly toxic and highly toxic pesticides shall not be used in vegetables, melons and fruits, tea and Chinese herbs" and other contents. This also means that China's supervision of food safety has been extended to the source.

Double management of food additive production

"Safe for fair and legitimate use"

Food additives have always been a topic of concern to consumers, but few people know that the excessive aluminum content of youtiao belongs to the problem caused by additives or the abuse of additives.

Sun Baoguo, vice chairman of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, President of Beijing Technology and Business University, believes that from the perspective of development and from a global perspective, food additives are indispensable in the current food industry, and some traditional foods will also use food additives. China is in the rapid development stage of the food industry, and the panic about food additives has been exposed. However, whether it is from the development of China's food additives industry, or the development of China's food industry requirements for food additives, the variety of food additives in China is not enough, but also need to increase appropriately. Of course, some varieties will also be eliminated, especially in recent years, some new varieties have been added to the international, and it needs a process to be included in the "Food additive use standard" (GB 2760).

For the development of China's food additive industry, Sun Baoguo is still positive. He stressed that the development of China's food additives and the development of China's entire food industry is compatible, and there are quite a few varieties of supply abroad, many are the world, and even some monopoly international market.

At the same time, Sun Baoguo also admitted that the development level of China's food additives enterprises is uneven, there are one of the best leading enterprises in the world, and there are many relatively small enterprises. Even the world's top food additive companies are small compared with food companies, which is a special phenomenon in this industry. However, China has adopted dual management for food additive production enterprises, and enterprises engaged in food additive production must obtain production licenses, and the varieties of food additives they produce must also be licensed. From this point of view, China's control of the production of food additives is still very good, and the industry is developing rapidly.

In Sun Baoguo's view, as long as it is a food additive approved for use in China, and is used within the specified amount or larger residue range, it is safe for food. The problem is that there are quite a number of small enterprises or small and micro enterprises, individual practitioners of stalls, because of personal quality problems, the understanding of food additives is not in place, and even some do not know that we have a "food additive use standard", which will also bring hidden dangers to food safety. Therefore, it is very important that we educate food producers on how to use food additives reasonably and legally.

Chen Junshi revealed that the output value of China's food industry has declined year after year in recent years, but food additives are an exception, whose annual growth rate exceeds that of the entire food industry. "What does that mean? The industry is alive and well and will continue to thrive no matter how much food additives are demonized."

Recalls add another line of defense to food safety

Companies are the main performers

Beijing consumer CAI Jia recently found more and more QR codes around her. These barcodes used to appear on advertising display boards, mostly links to e-commerce sites. Now they are not only on milk powder cans, but also on boxes of fresh blueberries. So she tried to scan the QR code on the blueberry package with her mobile phone software. To her surprise, the interface of the whole traceability system was displayed on the phone, which included five modules: production base, processing factory, monitoring information, logistics and transportation information and sales information. The information was detailed to soil and water detection, agricultural residue indicators, as well as the specific address of the processing factory and production personnel.

CAI Jia did not know that for the quality of agricultural products and the safety of the whole food chain that consumers are concerned about, the central No. 1 document at the beginning of this year clearly proposed the establishment of a fully traceable Internet food platform. However, China's agricultural products generally have problems such as long circulation chain and multiple channels, so some consumers question whether all food can be traced to the whole industrial chain.

At the conference, Hu Xiaosong, vice chairman of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology and dean of the College of Food Science and Nutrition Engineering of China Agricultural University, said that from a technical point of view, whether it is one-dimensional bar codes, two-dimensional bar codes, three-dimensional bar codes, all the way to RFID, radio frequency technology or monitoring probes that can transmit temperature, these have been done for more than ten years of research and reserve. In addition, the whole agricultural system is also spreading the recording of agricultural production process layer by layer, first in one province, then in 20 provinces, and finally in the whole country. What is the record system? That is, the farmers use chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the production process, and record these and keep them for more than three years. Both are designed to lay the groundwork for a traceability system from field to fork. When it comes to technical support, it is the guarantee of farmers' consciousness and farmers' raw material production process.

In addition, Hu Xiaosong also said that in recent years, China has accumulated rich experience from events, one is the 2008 Olympic Games into the Olympic village all ingredients into the traceability system, the second is the Shanghai World Expo, the third is the Guangzhou Asian Games.

In Hu Xiaosong's view, the traceability system is the docking process of decentralized peasant household production and large industry, large circulation, and large commerce, and it is relatively difficult to achieve it completely. For example, he said that even in Germany, if there is a food safety problem, it will take up to several months to lock down who, what ingredients, and where it is produced, so we must use an objective and developmental perspective to look at today's practice and future construction, and ultimately to share the whole people.

On September 1, the "Food Recall Management Measures" issued by the Food and Drug Administration will be implemented. But who should play a bigger role in the traceability system? In this regard, Chen Junshi, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and researcher of the Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, analyzed that traceability is mainly a matter of enterprises and industries, and it is done by enterprises. The responsibility of the government is to make demands, to have regulations.

Chen Junshi said that food enterprises are the main performers of food traceability, and the government can promote the timely recycling of unqualified products or risky products through this traceability performance, so this significance is very important. The future trend is to focus on enterprises and establish their own traceability system. If everyone does it, of course it's safe. In China, it is still necessary to solve the problem of the construction of the traceability system for small and medium-sized enterprises.