Traditionally， the food safety net has targeted the intermediary stages of thefood chain-when foodis processed from its rawstate-rather than theinitial or final stages of thefood chain， where food isgrown or consumed，

But a spate of outbreaksof food-borne diseaseshas highlighted the factthat many breaches of foodsafety have their origins atthe very beginning of thefood chain.

We need to strengthen every single part of the foodchain. One weak link， es-pecially near the beginning，can make the whole foodChain collapse.

China has paid greatattention on the quality andsafety control over the foodsources and raw material.

By Editor

Food safety is a global issue which de-mands an integrated， global response.The answer to tackling the issue offood-borne hazards lies very close to home-in the farms， fields， orchards and rivers， largeor small-where our food has its source.Agricultural products， which ，are daily neces-sity of our life and raw material of many kindsof processed food， usually come directly fromthese sources. In this regard， the quality andsafety of agricultural products should be al-ways on the top of priorities.

The Chinese government has been at-taching great importance to the farm productssafety. Since the implementation of Hazard-Free Food Action Plan， China has improvedthe quality control system of agriculturalproducts and strengthened the supervisionand administration of relevant departments.Over the past more than 10 years， China'sagricultural products have been graatly im-proved in quality and safety. China's overallagricultural products are safe and reassunng.

Fast and sound growth

According to the Ministry of Agriculture.quality agricultural products are steadily ex-panding their market. Agricultural standard-ization has been notably enhanced， whichincreases farmers' income and changes theirfarming patterns.

Hazard-free， green and organic productsmake up 90% of all agricultural-product ex-ports. Over the past five years， the export ofgreen food has shot up 40% annually， and hasbeen accepted by over 40 of China's tradingpartners.

So far. China has developed 28，600 kindsof hazard-free agricultural products， and setup 24，600 hazard-free production bases witha total area of 21.07 million hectares. Fivethousand three hundred and fifteen Chineseenterprises use the green food logo on their14，339 kinds of products totaling 72 milliontons growing on 10 million hectares of land.In addition. 600 producers use the organicfood logo on their 2.647 kinds of productstotaling 19.56 million tons growing on 3.11million hectares of land.

Altogether， there are 539 state-levelagricultural demonstration zones， 100 dem-onstration counties (farms) and nearly 3，500provincial-level demonstration zones， with acombined growing area exceeding 33.33 mil-lion hectares.

Ever-rising aceptance rate

Inspections in the first half of 2007showed that the average acceptance rateregarding pesticide residues in vegetableswas 93.6%; those regarding clenbuterol hy-drochloride contamination and sulfa drugresidues in livestock products were 98.8%and 99.0% respectively; and that regard-ing chloromycetin in aquatic products was99.6%， of nitrofuran 91.4%， and of pesticideresidue over 95% in sample surveys done atproduction bases.

Improved origin protection

The Chinese government has exertedgreat efforts in both legislation and adminis-tration work on the protection of producingplaces and environment to curb the safetythreaten from the very beginning. The Minis-try of Agriculture has promulgated Measuresof Place of Origin of Agricultural ProductsProtection Management and more than 23provinces (cities or autonomous regions) inChina have put forth relevant rules and regu-lations. At the same time， the state and localgovernments have been actively introducing\"clean and green\" agricultural technologies.

Over more than decade's effort， the Chi-nese government has made great achieve-ments in agricultural products qual-ity and safety. But at the same time.it also knows clearly that this isnot an easy taskand we have tomake con-tinuousefforts.