New regulations on online takeout are about to be introduced, goodbye to ＂black workshops, fly houses＂
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 30 Question: How does "the trouble on the tip of the tongue" stop coming? – Exploring the new coordinates of national food safety governance
Xinhua News Agency reporter
From "online takeaway" to "rest assured meat dishes", with the increasingly upgraded concept of national consumption, the people’s requirements for delicious food continue to increase. Eating healthy and safe is a "big deal" for the people, and every link in the food industry has also become the focus of attention of the people.
Implement the food and beverage quality and safety improvement project, make "looking for a smiley face to eat" a consumer fashion, and use "bright kitchen and bright stove" to "light up" food safety… In recent years, the food and drug supervision department has strictly controlled every line of defense from farmland to dining table, zero tolerance for violations of laws and regulations, Kuaishou, and heavy punches.
Platform checks: New regulations on online takeout are coming soon
Statistics from the China Cuisine Association show that in 2016, the national catering income was 3.58 trillion yuan, of which the online ordering market reached 357.90 billion yuan, accounting for about 10%. While the huge market size poses challenges to supervision, online catering chaos such as "black workshops" and "fly halls" also brings "troubles on the tip of the tongue" to takeaway diners.
According to industry insiders, "black workshops" and "fly halls" are frequent, the source is offline, and the root is on the platform. To manage the chaos of online ordering, the third-party platform also needs to play the role of "gatekeeper". Bi Jingquan, director of the State Food and Drug Administration, previously stressed that it is necessary to strictly implement the responsibility of the third-party platform for online catering services and ensure that the food business license displayed online is true, which is to ensure that the offline producers and operators must be brick and mortar stores, not "black workshops"; to ensure that the food is not contaminated during the delivery process, because the logistics company for the delivery is selected and designated by the third-party platform; to ensure that complaints against consumers are dealt with in a timely manner, because consumers order food and settle on the third-party platform.
"Those who use the internet to provide catering services should have a physical store and obtain a food business license in accordance with the law," according to the "exposure draft" published by the Food and Drug Administration. Experts said that the "binding brick and mortar store" regulation will erect a "high-voltage line" at the source of online catering food production.
According to the relevant person in charge of the Second Division of the Food and Drug Administration, the next step is for the Food and Drug Administration to issue the "Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Online Catering Services" to clarify the respective food safety responsibilities and obligations of online third-party service platforms, online catering service units, and food and drug regulatory authorities, standardize online catering service business practices, prevent and control online catering service food safety risks, and protect consumer rights and interests.
Back Kitchen Live: The "Transparent Food Safety" behind the inter-provincial report
Recently, a news that a user in Shandong Province reported a Jiangsu restaurant across provinces has caused heated debate in the industry. According to the surveillance video exposed by the user on the Internet, three people in chef’s clothes are suspected of not wearing masks, eating with their hands, and playing with mobile phones during meals. It is understood that this store is a Quanjude franchise store in Huaian, Jiangsu. Quanjude has ordered it to suspend business immediately for rectification.
Why can Shandong netizens report across provinces? It turned out that the Huai’an Food and Drug Administration launched the "Food Safety + Internet" transparent co-governance system and established the "Huai’an Transparent Food and Drug Administration" network platform, which connected all the videos of "Mingchu Liangzao" to the network and was open to the society and accepted social supervision. Therefore, some Shandong netizens "reported across provinces" the behavior of restaurant employees suspected of not meeting relevant regulations.
Zhong Kai, deputy director of the Kexin Food and Nutrition Information Exchange Center, said that in the supervision process, not every restaurant has a supervisor watching every minute, but countless consumers may change into regulators at any time and participate in the co-governance of food safety society. This is the charm of "bright kitchen and bright stove" and "transparent food safety".
"Although’bright kitchen and bright stove ‘is not the master key to solve all problems, it will become an important way for the public to participate in the social governance of food safety, and it will also become an important deterrent to illegal food production and operation," Zhong Kai said.
It is understood that by the end of 2016, the number of catering service units that have implemented "bright kitchen and bright stove" in various places reached 902,600 households, an increase of 115% over the same period in 2015, an increase of 483,700 households; the catering service units that have implemented "bright kitchen and bright stove" accounted for 27.52% of the total number of licensed catering service units.
The relevant person in charge of the Second Division of the Food and Drug Administration pointed out that the implementation of the "bright kitchen and bright stove" has given full play to the social supervision role of consumers, extended the supervision tentacles, further enhanced the pertinence and targeting of supervision, and to a certain extent realized the all-weather supervision of food safety in catering service units, effectively making up for the shortage of supervision personnel.
Full chain traceability: scan the code to scan out the "past and present life" of a box of durians.
Scan the barcode, check the origin, check the date… In the 52 Meitehao supermarkets in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, there are more than 60 food safety traceability inquiry machines "lurking", so that the ordinary people who come to shop directly praise "Buy safely and rest assured".
"I am a’regular customer ‘of this machine." Li Nan Nan, who lives in Xinghua Street, Taiyuan City, told reporters that whether she is buying fresh meat, vegetables, fruits, etc., or choosing ordinary goods, she is used to checking on the supermarket traceability machine. The reporter’s experience found that picking up a box of durians, pointing the barcode at the scanning area, the system popped up the message of this box of durians: "Supplied by Qingxu County Agricultural Products Base" "Produced on July 14" "Shelf life is 5 days", and the attached "Agricultural Product Source Batch Certificate" clearly shows that the box of durians was purchased from Beijing Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market – it took less than a minute to understand the entire product chain.
Huang Dengyu, director of the Food Circulation Department of the Shanxi Provincial Food and Drug Administration, said that after the system is put into use, it can not only simplify the cumbersome bill retention management, but also realize the dynamic control of quality management "from farmland to table" and "from factory to table", escorting the safety of the tongue.
Establishing a food safety traceability system is one of the priorities of this year’s food safety work, and it is also an important goal of the "13th Five-Year" National Food Safety Plan. It is understood that 30 provinces across the country have arranged the deployment of safe meat and vegetable demonstration supermarket creation activities based on local work conditions to promote enterprises to implement their main responsibilities. (Written reporter: Chen Cong; Participating reporters: Huo Yao, Dong Xiaohong, Bao Xiaojing, Shuai Cai)