SHENZHEN has been named a National Food Safety Demonstration City.

It is one of 29 cities bestowed the title by the Food Safety Commission of the State Council, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the country’s market watchdog, announced on its official WeChat account yesterday. Guangzhou is the only other city in Guangdong Province that has made it onto the list.

The honorees excel in food safety governance and technological innovation, the state of food safety, public satisfaction and social recognition.

“Eight years of unremitting efforts have paid off,” a senior official from Shenzhen’s food and drug safety committee told the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily in an interview yesterday, who was thrilled at the good news, but declined to be identified.

Since Shenzhen launched the National Food Safety Demonstration City campaign in 2014, it has been pouring money and efforts into improving food safety management. In the next seven years leading up to 2020, the city invested 2.4 billion yuan (US$330 million) in food and drug safety improvement, according to the local administration for market regulation.

In 2018, Shenzhen became China’s first city to deploy food safety rapid detection vehicles in all subdistricts. As of this January, the vehicles had examined 3.19 million food samples and detected 26,000 unqualified samples among them. Some 80 tons of unsafe food samples had been destroyed. Data showed random inspections garnered a 98% pass rate, leading the country.

High-definition cameras have been installed in kitchens of nearly 11,700 restaurants and school canteens larger than 200 square meters in size, which allow consumers to see real-time live feeds from inside these kitchens on their mobile phones so that they can report violations when they see one.

A citywide food safety traceability management information system has been established as well, which has covered 4,400 supermarkets, and 2,600 preschools and primary and middle schools.

The city inaugurated the Shenzhen Standard program in 2019, which was listed by the State as an innovative move in 2021 and has been promoted nationwide.

Products under the program are accredited as “圳品” (zhenpin), which are food and agricultural produce that meet Shenzhen’s food standard requirements. As of September, the program had included 821 products produced by over 250 firms from 25 provinces and regions.

In 2020, Shenzhen took the country’s lead to set up a centralized supervision warehouse for imported frozen products. The warehouse implements full inspection of each batch of imported frozen products, complete disinfection of each item, and full traceability of the product.

The city became Guangdong’s first demonstration city for food safety in June 2020. One month later it was ranked first on the list of China’s top 10 cities with good life, released by China Central Television, in terms of residents’ satisfaction on food safety.

(Li Jing)