Food safety in Shanghai

I spent part of last week in Shanghai advising on food safety issues in advance of the World Expo 2010, which will be held in that city.  This was my first visit to China, so as well as providing a good opportunity to catch up with food safety experts from the World Health Organization, the US Food and Drug Administration, Australia, Japan and China, it also gave me a flavour of life in that part of the world and I was welcomed by some charming and enthusiastic students of food science from Shanghai Ocean University.  Ensuring food safety during the World Expo will be a huge challenge.  Seventy million visitors are expected to visit the site between May and October – the hottest time of the year.  And it is not just the safety of food sold at the event that will help determine its success – or otherwise – but also food sold throughout the city.

Clearly, a large scale event such as the World Expo raises additional challenges, but there was a consensus among speakers that controls needed to be risk-based; that food businesses on site should have food safety plans based on HACCP principles; that everyone should attend training; that businesses should have 'one up-one down' traceability and that there should be a hotline for food safety information for everyone attending.  I spoke about the lessons learnt in the UK on food safety, emphasising the importance of basing decisions on good science and how helpful openness and transparency about food safety issues has been for building and developing trust.  I talked about how we have responded to some major food safety incidents (Sudan dyes and Guar gum), how our Safer Food, Better Business approach helps small food businesses meet basic HACCP requirements, and how this information has now been translated into several different languages, reflecting the diverse nature of the catering business in the UK.

Finally, I really enjoyed the Shanghai cuisine.  The local students said I should really try the spicy Szechuan cuisine – maybe next time.