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Assessing the establishment of agro-food control systems based on a relevant officials’ survey in China
Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
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Assessing the establishment of agro-food control systems based on a relevant officials’ survey in China Lijie Yang, Yongzhong Qian, Chen Chen, Fang Wang* Institute of Quality Standards & Testing Technology for Agro-Products, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 29 June 2011 Received in revised form 23 January 2012 Accepted 24 January 2012
With agro-food safety events happening frequently, China is taking measures to build agro-food control systems that include establishing an organization and agencies, enacting laws, allocating funds and so on. To assess the establishment of agro-food control systems, an electronic survey was sent to local agro-food control officials in 22 provinces of China. With descriptive analysis and factor analysis of 214 respondents, we determined an objective view of the establishment of municipal agro-food control systems in China. The study shows that there are great challenges to establishing these systems. Although local governments paid high attention to agro-food control by measures such as signing responsibility contracts and bringing the indicators of performance of agro-food control into the local government performance evaluation system, local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety were rarely enacted, Agro-food Safety Public Services were scarcely established in townships, and multi-sectoral management caused inefficiency. Moreover, 89.08% of the respondents indicated that the funds provided by local governments were not enough for agro-food control, which was also considered the biggest problem. It is apparent that there are great regional differences in the establishment of agro-food control systems. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Agro-food Quality and safety Food control system China
1. Introduction Food is a basic need; it is government’s responsibility to ensure that this need is met (FAO, 2002). Food safety is not only crucial to public health but also a very social problem. According to the new comprehensive estimates of foodborne illnesses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 48 million people (1 in 6 Americans) get sick, and 3000 die each year from foodborne illnesses in the United States (CDC, 2010). In 2008, according to a report in South China Morning Post Greater China Outlook, more than 290,000 infants suffered from an impeded urinary tract due to melamine (SCMP.com, 2008). The hazards associated with foods prompt governments to intervene in the food chain by establishing national food control systems (Neeliah & Goburdhun, 2007). However, food control generally had a relatively low priority and consisted of numerous small components with limited coordination (Varzakas, Tsigarida, Apostolopoulos, Kalogridou-Vassiliadou, & Jukes, 2006), such as administration, quality assurance systems,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 10 82106552; fax: þ86 10 82106551. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (F. Wang). 0956-7135/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.foodcont.2012.01.048
personnel, funds and so on. In developing countries, especially in China, the importance of the establishment of food control systems is just being recognized by the governments, but the elements of the food control systems are badly lacking. Therefore, the establishment of food control systems inevitably becomes a long-term process. Agro-food consumption accounts for more than 70% of the total food consumption in China, while highly processed food consumption accounts for less than 30%. In the past 10 years, more than 30 of approximately 50 exposed food safety events in China were agro-food safety events. Therefore, people are greatly concerned about agro-food safety issues. Presently, a series of agrofood scares (dioxin, melamine and malachite green) have seriously undermined Chinese public confidence in agro-food safety. In addition, China’s food exports suffered significantly because China cannot always meet international food safety standards (Jin, Zhou, & Ye, 2008). This issue was exposed at the 104th China Export Commodities Fair in 2008 with an approximately 30% decline in food export turnover after the melamine event (Huang, 2009). To reduce the loss, the Chinese government has established numerous measures to tighten up agro-food control. In China, the people’s governments are established at central, provincial, municipal, county and township levels. Agro-food control is mainly under the jurisdiction of the administrative
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departments for agriculture under the people’s governments at or above the county level. The agro-food control work of the administrative departments for agriculture is arranged by the people’s governments, but these local governments could get some technical or methodological guidance from the administrative departments for agriculture at higher or central levels. In 2006, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products (SCNPC, 2006) regulated the governments’ responsibilities for the quality and safety control of agricultural products, the actions of agricultural product operators and the requirements for supervisory departments. In the same year, the MOA (Ministry of Agriculture) Regulation 67/2006 on the labeling of livestock and poultry and record files of breeding, Regulation 70/2006 on the packaging and labeling of agricultural products and Regulation 71/2006 on the production place of agricultural products stipulated some specific requirements in three aspects according to the Law of the PRC on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products. In 2009, the Food Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China (SCNPC, 2009) regulated the formulation of quality and safety standards for agro-food in chapter three and the release of safety information about agro-food in chapter seven. Because the laws and regulations on food and agricultural products define the aims and not the specific means, the different control officials may apply the statutes differently (Tähkäpää, Kallioniemi, Korkeala, & Maijala, 2009). Furthermore, each article of the law confronts different challenges due to the different cultures, economics and environments among the regions, and the day-today changes encountered in the regions. With the laws on food and agricultural products being enforced, agencies, policies and some specific works of agro-food control systems are being set up throughout the whole country to maintain a high agro-food safety level, to achieve consistent procedures throughout China, and to facilitate trade among and between regions. It is necessary to explore how each aspect of the systems was established, which parts were of most concern to officials and whether there are regional differences in establishing agro-food control systems. This information is essential for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of new regulations and measures of the systems, for ensuring equal treatment and for prohibiting the possible unfair competition of agro-food operators or local authorities among the different areas (Tähkäpää et al., 2009). This study was conducted due to the current, significant changes both in the legislation and structures of the agro-food control systems. The study aimed to identify the difficulties and problems that hindered the establishment of these systems. Overcoming these difficulties and solving these problems will help to improve the agro-food safety level. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Survey A cross-sectional study, conducted in 17 provinces, 4 autonomous regions and 2 municipalities directly under the Central Government of China1 from March 2009 to April 2010, surveyed the establishment of agro-food control systems at all levels. In this paper, only the municipal data were analyzed. The survey group was composed of officials and researchers from the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), the Ministry of Agriculture and the Research Center of Quality
1 Municipalities directly under the Central Government are different from general municipalities. They have the same administrative level as provinces and autonomous regions in China.
Standard for Agro-Produce. The first step was to investigate the agro-food control system in Shandong province. The result contributed to the design of the questionnaire. Next, agro-food control officials in Jiangsu (province, municipalities and counties) were selected for the pretest. Third, based on the useful feed-back information from the pretest, the questionnaire was revised. Finally, we collected the first-hand data through electronic questionnaires answered by agro-food control officials in administrative departments for agriculture at and above the county level. 2.2. Questionnaire The questionnaire about the establishment of agro-food control systems consisted of 33 questions, which were organized into four sections: agricultural development, groups and agencies in the systems, relevant policies to improve agro-food quality and safety and specific work in agro-food control. Of the 33 total questions, 23 questions in the later 3 sections were selected as original evaluating indicators. The Bureau for Agricultural Food Quality and Safety under the Ministry of Agriculture informed provincial Departments of Agriculture of our survey on agro-food quality and safety in September 2009. In the notice, the administrative departments for agriculture under the people’s government at provincial, municipal and county levels were required to download electronic questionnaires from the website of China Agricultural Quality Standards and answer the questions. The provincial Departments of Agriculture collected all the questionnaires and sent them to the Bureau for Agricultural Food Quality and Safety. In total, 313 electronic questionnaires were required to be answered by the municipal administrative departments for agriculture, and 253 were submitted, of which 214 were found to be usable. The 214 study respondents consisted of officials from 202 of 340 cities and 12 of 74 districts,2 who were in charge of agricultural product quality and safety supervision. Fig. 1 illustrates the number of valid questionnaires received from each province and the number of municipalities under the control of each province. The regional distribution percentage of the responses from all the municipalities situated in each region3 was as follows: Eastern China 50.0%, Central China 59.0%, Northeastern China 52.8% and Western China 49.0%. The 214 respondents represented more than half of all municipalities in China. 2.3. Statistical analyses The questionnaire responses were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2003 software (Microsoft Corporation; Redmond, WA, USA) and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 18.0 for Windows (SPSS Inc.; Chicago, IL, USA). Means with standard deviations (SDs), frequencies and percentages of the responses in each category were calculated. Factor analysis was performed to comprehensively assess the establishment and ranking of municipal agro-food control systems. Regional differences were calculated based on the regional response rate and total scores.
2 The districts of municipalities directly under the Central Government have the same administrative levels as normal municipalities in China. 3 According to the China Statistic Yearbook (2009), China consists of four economic areas: Eastern China, Central China, Northeastern China and Western China. Eastern China includes the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan; Central China includes the provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi; Northeastern China includes the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang; Western China includes the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Xizang, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi.
L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
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Fig. 1. Valid questionnaires received from 21 provinces and 2 municipalities directly under the central government of China.
In factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was adopted to examine the partial correlation among and between the variables, whose value was set at >0.70. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was used to examine whether the correlation matrix was a unit matrix, and the statistical significance was set at <0.05. The total scores are calculated by the model:
F ¼ b1 *F1 þ b2 *F2 . þ bi *Fi
ði ¼ 1; 2.kÞ
where k is the number of selected principal factors. If the selected principal factors could cumulatively account for 85% of the total variance, it indicated that these factors contained nearly the entire message of all the original indicators. Fi (i ¼ 1, 2 . k) are factor scores. Factor scores are evaluated in a scaled form in which each variable is transformed into a set of standardized and dimensionless variables (zero mean and standard deviation equal to one), and then, taking the score coefficients of all the new variables in the corresponding factor as weights, the weighted sums of the new set of variables are calculated to obtain the factor scores. The factor score coefficients are estimated by a regression method. The principal factors are extracted by principal component analysis. bi (i ¼ 1, 2 . k) represents the proportions of eigenvalues of the correlation matrix, which are variance proportions. The factor scores are multiplied with bi as the weights of the corresponding principal factors and added to obtain the total scores of the samples (Zhang, 2006). 3. Results 3.1. Groups and agencies Table 1 shows the groups and agencies set up in the agro-food control systems, which indicated how the systems had taken
shape initially. Most of the municipalities (83.5%) had agro-food safety leadership groups that could coordinate all agro-food quality and safety supervision departments and arrange the important actions when an agro-food safety event happened (General Office of State Council, 2007). Although 68.4% of the municipalities
Table 1 Groups and agencies in agro-food control systems. Questions
Answers
Subject (no.)
Percent (%)
Is an agro-food safety leadership group established? Is a specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authority established? Is a department for agricultural law enforcement established? Is an Agro-food Safety Public Service established in the townships? How many testing agencies are established under the government? (number)
Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No Less than 10 10e19 20e29 More than 29 0e2 3e4 5e6 7e8 0e4 5e9 10e14 15e19 More than 19
177 35 145 67 109 103 30 175 166
83.5 16.5 68.4 31.6 51.4 48.6 14.6 85.4 84.7
26 2 2
13.3 1.0 1.0
145 13 3 3 123 19 11 1 2
88.4 7.9 1.8 1.8 78.9 12.2 7.0 0.6 1.3
And how many of the testing agencies obtained the CMA? (number)
How many agro-food wholesale markets established testing departments? (number)
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established specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authorities, the average number of persons engaged in supervision was less than 8, and 82.2% of the respondents indicated that the plant, livestock and aquatic product safety management were scattered under different authorities. Meanwhile, 51.4% of the municipalities established departments for agricultural law enforcement. However, only 14.6% set up Agro-food Safety Public Services in the townships, which are mainly responsible for the agro-food safety training of farmers, agro-food control technology extension, routine inspections of agro-food production processes and the implementation of agro-food control measures (MOA, 2011). This enquiry suggests that the grass-roots services received the lowest attention and that the establishment of Agro-food Safety Public Services in the townships was the most common difficulty. The numbers of testing agencies under the governments varied from 0 to 67, but in most municipalities (84.7%), the number was less than 10. Further, the number of testing agencies with the China Metrological Accreditation (CMA) (AQSIQ, 2006) was mostly no more than 2, and the testing departments contained in agro-food wholesale market administrations were less. In 78.9% of the municipalities, the number of testing departments was less than 4. Compared to that, the average number of all agro-food wholesale markets was 26.5, according to our survey. According to the Law of the PRC on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products, agro-food wholesale markets are encouraged to establish a department for testing agricultural product safety. 3.2. Policies and measures Of all the municipalities, 85.6% brought the indicators of performance of agro-food control into local government performance evaluation systems,4 and 86% of the governments signed responsibility contracts with agro-food quality and safety supervision departments and the governments at lower levels. The two above-mentioned measures were the most common measures taken by the governments to improve agro-food quality and safety control. The implementation of these measures reflected the governments’ strong attention to food control. In addition, 57.2% of the investigated municipalities included the budget for agro-food control in the control systems, 54.2% included preferential policies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food, and 57.8% required farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives to sign an agro-food safety commitment in which the legal responsibilities of farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives were emphasized to raise their agro-food safety awareness. Although governments attached importance to agro-food safety, some shortages in the establishment of an agro-food control system existed. Only 25.0% of the municipalities enacted local laws or regulations relevant to agro-food quality and safety, and only 27.4% of the municipalities allowed agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises to enjoy preferential policies or subsidies for the establishment of their testing departments (Table 2). Therefore, two considerable challenges in the establishment of the control system were to formulate local legislations and preferential policies or subsidies.
Table 2 Relevant policies or measure to improve agro-food quality and safety. Questions
Answers
Subject (no.)
Percent (%)
Does the government sign a responsibility contract with the supervision department and the governments at lower levels? Does the government bring the indicators of performance of agro-food control into the government performance evaluation system? Does the supervision department sign an agro-food safety commitment with farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives? Does the government approve a budget for agro-food control? Are there any preferential policies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food included in the system? Do agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises enjoy any preferential policies or subsidies for the establishment of their testing departments? Are local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety enacted?
Yes No
178 29
86.0 14.0
Yes No
178 30
85.6 14.4
Yes No
119 87
57.8 42.2
Yes No Yes No
119 89 104 88
57.2 42.8 54.2 45.8
Yes No
49 130
27.4 72.6
Yes No
52 156
25.0 75.0
followed by a further quantitative analysis for agro-food that tested positive for chemical residues (59.4%). Other supervision work included the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) and the ISO series systems certifications (53.7%) and traceability systems (50.3%). The biggest challenge for the governments’ supervision work was to set up an agro-food safety market access system,5 which merely 37.5% of all the municipalities established, whereas the system was first introduced for wheat flour, rice, edible vegetable oil, soy sauce and vinegar by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in early 2002 (AQSIQ, 2002). Among those municipalities whose governments approved budgets for agro-food control (57.2%), 70.2% had an annual budget of less than 1 million yuan ($154,400), and only 10.9% of the respondents indicated that the funds could meet their demands. When the respondents were asked whether it was difficult to control agro-food quality and safety effectively, most respondents (93.7%) had a positive response. Lack of funds was indicated to be the biggest problem (42.2% of the respondents), whereas lack of technology was not considered to be a big problem (only 20.1% of the respondents consider it as the biggest problem). In 75.4% of the municipalities, the number of farmer production enterprises keeping production records was less than 100, and the average number of this kind of enterprise was 74. In comparison, the average number of all farmer production enterprises was up to 534, according to our survey. This statistic shows that only approximately one in seven farmer production enterprises paid attention to agro-food safety in the production process. Moreover, the average number of products certified as Safe Agro-food and Green Food,6 according to the corresponding certification systems (MOA & AQSIQ, 2002; CGFDC, 2006), were 95.4 and 44.3,
3.3. Specific work Table 3 shows some specific work in agro-food control. The most common supervision work was routine monitoring (93.3%),
4 In government performance evaluation systems, total scores could be calculated through a statistical analysis of all evaluating indicators.
5 The agro-food safety market access system mainly covers three areas: (1) A food production licensing system will be implemented, (2) food production will be subject to mandatory inspection, and (3) food that has been inspected and found up to standard will be granted the “QS” label and given market access to assure consumers that it is “quality safe”. 6 Green Food, a kind of high quality food, is produced according to a series of specific standards whose level is between the standards of Safe Agro-food and Organic Food.
L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
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respectively. Relative to the number of farmer production enterprises, these two average numbers were very small.
3.5. Ranking the scores of the municipalities based on factor analysis
3.4. Regional characteristics
The data matrix of 214 samples for all the above 23 variables was analyzed by the factor analysis. The results of the KMO measure of sampling adequacy (0.705) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Sig. ¼ 0.000) show that the partial correlation among and between variables is strong enough and that the correlation matrix is not a unit matrix. Therefore, factor analysis is applicable to the data matrix. The first 14 principal factors (k ¼ 14) cumulatively account for 81.63% of the total variance, while the rest of the data dispersion could be considered as random. Factor 1 was the largest contributor, explaining 16.7% of the variability, while Factor 2 could account for 9.8% of the variability (Table 5). Safe Agro-food, Green Food and system certification were found to contribute to the major loadings to Factor 1; government performance evaluation system, responsibility contract and agro-food safety commitment contributed to the major loadings to Factor 2; the traceability system, market access system and leadership group contributed to the major loadings to Factor 3; and other variables also majorly loaded on some principal factor from Factor 4 to 14. Each variable was a positive contributor to the major load of its principal factor. Each municipality’s total score is calculated by the model of factor analysis. Out of 214 municipalities, 196 were selected for factor analysis. Of these, 1.0% of the municipalities had the highest
Table 4 shows the regional characteristics of the agro-food control systems in municipalities in China. Obviously, some regional differences existed. All of the investigated municipalities in Northeastern China had agro-food safety leadership groups, while approximately 80% of the municipalities in the other three regions had such groups. In Central China, 38.6% of the municipalities had preferential policies or subsidies for testing departments in agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises, while none of the investigated municipalities in Northeastern China had such policies. Moreover, in Eastern China, 72.9% of the governments approved budgets for agro-food control, and the annual per capita fund was more than 0.44 yuan ($0.07), which was nearly 10 times the amount fund in Western China. Overall, the governments of Eastern China established the best agro-food control systems in the four regions, with the highest implementation rate of the 17 enquired supervision measures, including system certification (80.0%), quantitative analysis (83.1%), the average number of farmer production enterprises making the production record (126), the average number of products certified as Safe Agro-food (156) and so on. In contrast, Western China established the worst systems, mainly in the 13 enquired supervision measures, including agro-food safety market access systems (20.8%), traceability systems (31.9%), the average number of products certified as Green Food (22.4) and so on. This result suggests that a rather big gap of regional difference existed between Eastern China and Western China, which may be very difficult to narrow and probably would get wider because of the widening gap of absolute development speeds between the two regions (Wan, 2010).
Table 3 Specific work in agro-food control. Questions
Answers
Subject (no.)
Percent (%)
Is agro-food quality and safety monitored routinely? If agro-food tests positive for chemical residues, will there be a further quantitative analysis? Are the GAP, HACCP and ISO series systems certifications implemented? Is a traceability system established?
Yes No Yes No
195 14 92 63
93.3 6.7 59.4 40.7
Yes No Yes No Yes No Less than 1 1e2 2e3 More than 3 Less than 100 100e199 200e299 300e399 More than 399 Less than 100 100e199 200e299 300e399 400e499 More than 499 Less than 100 100e199 200e299 More than 299
87 75 100 99 78 130 80 14 2 18 86 14 4 7 3 145 26 15 6 3 4 154 13 4 2
53.7 46.3 50.3 49.8 37.5 62.5 70.2 12.3 1.8 15.8 75.4 12.3 3.5 6.1 2.6 72.9 13.1 7.5 3.0 1.5 2.0 89.0 7.5 2.3 1.2
Is an agro-food safety market access system established? If the government approves a budget for agro-food control, how much is the annual budget?(million yuan) How many farmer production enterprises keep production records? (number)
How many agricultural products are certified as Safe Agro-food? (number)
How many agricultural products are certified as Green Food? (number)
Table 4 Regional characteristics of the agro-food control systems in the municipalities in China (n ¼ 214) based on the enquiry. Situation
Eastern China
Central China
North eastern China
Western China
Our food control system includes Specialized supervision authority Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships Department for agricultural law enforcement Agro-food safety leadership group Government performance evaluation system Responsibility contract Agro-food safety commitment Budget for agro-food control Local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety Preferential policies or subsidies for the establishment of testing departments Preferential policies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food System certification Routine monitoring Quantitative analysis Agro-food safety market access system Traceability system How much/How many Testing agencies under the government Testing agencies with the CMA Agro-food wholesale markets with testing departments Annual budgets for agro-food control Farmer production enterprises keeping production records Agricultural products certified as Safe Agro-food Agricultural products certified as Green Food
(%) 64.4 26.1
(%) 64.6 12.8
(%) 84.2 5.3
(%) 70.8 7.1
63.4
53.1
21.1
46.6
82.2 90.3
83.3 83.3
100.00 88.2
80.8 81.7
90.1 71.0 72.9 28.6
81.3 62.5 56.3 25.5
88.2 37.5 33.3 15.8
84.5 46.6 48.6 23.6
32.8
38.6
0.0
19.7
71.4
52.3
23.1
43.1
80.0 97.2 83.1 44.9 61.2 Mean 7.4 1.7 5.3
53.9 91.7 61.0 58.3 66.0 Mean 5.0 1.1 2.6
45.5 88.9 50.0 21.1 37.5 Mean 4.9 0.7 3.0
29.8 91.6 28.9 20.8 31.9 Mean 3.7 0.7 1.9
208.5 125.8
57.0 65.5
16.0 100.3
11.3 31.1
155.8
66.1
109.6
46.2
64.3
35.5
87.1
22.4
228
L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
Table 5 Loading matrix of rotated factor. Variables
Green Food Safe Agro-food System certification Government performance evaluation system Responsibility contract Agro-food safety commitment Traceability system Market access system Leadership group Governmental testing agencies Testing agencies with the CMA Quantitative analysis Production records Agro-food wholesale markets with testing departments Preferential policies or subsidies for testing departments Annual budgets Local laws and regulations Budget for agro-food control Specialized supervision authority Department for law enforcement Public Services in townships Routine monitoring Preferential policies or subsidies for certification of agro-food % of Variance a
Factor 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
0.846a 0.828 0.459 0.005
0.010 0.025 0.091 0.857
0.052 0.055 0.216 0.025
0.048 0.012 0.222 0.049
0.000 0.160 0.024 0.088
0.073 0.138 0.263 0.025
0.132 0.119 0.190 0.123
0.132 0.045 0.250 0.056
0.029 0.051 0.023 0.069
0.056 0.071 0.158 0.097
0.124 0.111 0.290 0.033
0.113 0.035 0.171 0.060
0.004 0.012 0.250 0.027
0.025 0.057 0.178 0.087
0.026 0.086 0.034 0.069 0.005 0.017 0.148 0.083 0.145 0.448
0.849 0.519 0.051 0.073 0.351 0.011 0.015 0.042 0.037 0.068
0.077 0.298 0.816 0.621 0.588 0.071 0.076 0.079 0.060 0.183
0.052 0.089 0.165 0.107 0.077 0.904 0.152 0.056 0.004 0.381
0.012 0.206 0.126 0.111 0.027 0.110 0.728 0.696 0.162 0.132
0.096 0.102 0.020 0.143 0.160 0.018 0.307 0.059 0.851 0.489
0.028 0.096 0.040 0.162 0.085 0.005 0.247 0.140 0.047 0.002
0.077 0.104 0.034 0.453 0.139 0.092 0.133 0.026 0.088 0.141
0.020 0.100 0.054 0.208 0.326 0.048 0.109 0.352 0.052 0.114
0.005 0.379 0.087 0.027 0.253 0.091 0.192 0.179 0.148 0.012
0.014 0.164 0.019 0.137 0.078 0.044 0.025 0.049 0.073 0.240
0.007 0.057 0.156 0.272 0.317 0.047 0.089 0.138 0.048 0.177
0.052 0.125 0.033 0.096 0.041 0.052 0.034 0.286 0.051 0.127
0.089 0.276 0.041 0.107 0.055 0.036 0.113 0.029 0.123 0.032
0.022
0.108
0.099
0.018
0.026
0.027
0.914
0.062
0.099
0.002
0.059
0.037
0.041
0.107
0.372 0.161 0.081 0.074 0.156 0.071 0.017 0.109
0.082 0.158 0.064 0.056 0.056 0.078 0.048 0.046
0.041 0.001 0.072 0.015 0.031 0.162 0.059 0.017
0.381 0.158 0.077 0.094 0.022 0.037 0.026 0.024
0.259 0.124 0.091 0.024 0.016 0.028 0.103 0.051
0.105 0.079 0.077 0.133 0.029 0.002 0.023 0.114
0.426 0.080 0.130 0.028 0.042 0.040 0.023 0.130
0.205 0.863 0.096 0.020 0.003 0.043 0.020 0.063
0.197 0.070 0.886 0.071 0.047 0.127 0.013 0.001
0.103 0.010 0.068 0.856 0.007 0.176 0.045 0.071
0.174 0.018 0.061 0.030 0.920 0.045 0.064 0.022
0.014 0.064 0.120 0.171 0.037 0.868 0.016 0.028
0.124 0.011 0.004 0.027 0.064 0.023 0.945 0.014
0.153 0.093 0.001 0.083 0.031 0.037 0.006 0.935
16.723
9.847
6.955
6.031
5.762
5.373
4.817
4.470
4.072
3.992
3.735
3.511
3.288
3.058
Bold values indicate the highest loading.
total scores (F > 0.9); 8.7% had higher total scores (0.9 F > 0.3); 33.2% had common total scores (0.3 F > 0); 50.0% had lower total scores (0 > F 0.3); and 7.1% had the lowest total scores (0.3 > F 0.6). Zero points indicated an average level. According to Fig. 2 it could be concluded that the total scores also showed some regional differences. The municipalities whose total scores were above 0 points accounted for 62.1%, 55.6%, 25.0% and 20.3%, respectively, of the total municipalities in Eastern China, Central China, Northeastern China and Western China. Eastern China included all the highest scoring municipalities (F > 0.9), and 22.7% of the municipalities in this region had higher total scores (0.9 F > 0.3). In comparison, none of the municipalities in Western China had a total score higher than 0.3. The result
Fig. 2. Total scores of the municipal agro-food control systems in four regions based on factor analysis (n ¼ 196).
suggested that the closer to the coast the region is located, the better agro-food control systems were established, generally because the coastal areas have a prosperous economy and open information communication, which are crucial and essential to establish the system. 4. Discussion Governments seem to pay great attention to agro-food control. By signing responsibility contracts, municipal governments require supervision departments and the governments at lower levels to strictly carry out their obligations of supervision. The measure of bringing the indicators of performance of agro-food control into local government performance evaluation systems encourages officials to improve their management of agro-food quality and safety to receive a high performance review. In addition, due to the agro-food safety commitment signed with the supervision departments, farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives guarantee agro-food safety on their credit. As a measure of public administration (Li & Gan, 2011), the governments’ agro-food control is aimed to ensure public interest, so people are more likely to believe government agencies than any profit group. Finally, the governments’ high attention will bring out a positive social effect. According to Tähkäpää, Maijala, Hörman, Poutiainen-Lindfors, and Korkeala (2008), participation in decision-making and a higher awareness of governmental and local authorities as decision-makers about food control seem to have a positive effect on food control resourcing. When the respondents were asked to rearrange five factors, including the lack of technology, the shortage of funds, multi-sectoral management, governments’ insufficient priorities and others, according to their difficulty in agro-food control, the least respondents (10.3%) indicated that the shortage of enough priorities was the biggest problem.
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However, the governments’ high attention is not clearly reflected in local legislation. A few of the investigated municipalities enacted local laws on food or agricultural products or built the departments for agricultural law enforcement. Compared with the food legislation of developed countries, relevant laws need improvement in China. China lacks unified standards in the legislation of standard systems, inspection systems and market supervision, and the enforcement of food safety laws is weak (Li, Bian, & Wu, 2009). Some researchers (Mensah & Julien, 2011; Weimer & Vining, 1999) believe that the statutory regulatory approach is particularly deemed necessary because by its nature of food, where it is considered to be a good based on experience, and because of the inability of consumers to determine food safety before purchase or consumption due to information asymmetry. If agro-food control is implemented mainly through local commitment, not legislation, there may be a risk of weak enforceability, and officials may have free rein of agro-food control. In addition, legislation can confirm the forbiddance and the punishment for illegal operation. As a coercive measure, legislation is perceived to be a useful tool in food control by most food control officials (Jokela, Vehmas, & Lundén, 2009). Contrary to the great attention paid by the governments to food safety, the shortage of funds was regarded as the biggest problem by 42.2% of the respondents. Of the investigated governments, 42.8% did not approve budgets for agro-food control, and relevant preferential policies or subsidies were not widely promulgated. This means that if local agro-food quality and safety supervision departments want to control agro-food safety, they must solve the problem of the fund shortage by themselves, which is very difficult for agro-food control officials. In addition, the lack of fiscal support may bring about some further problems, such as the lack of personnel training, the low frequency of tests and few certifications of safe agro-food. In the preliminary construction phase of these systems, fiscal support is necessary, and increased funding for food safety is a good step (Elliot, 2009). For operators or producers, production of safe agro-food has some positive externalities, including an overflow of economic income, covering the cost of optimizing the ecological environment and other industries’ external cost (Liu & Xia, 2010), which increase the cost of production. Currently, a great challenge hindering the compliance of enterprises to food safety management systems is the high cost of development and implementation (Mensah and Julien, 2011). If these enterprises are not supported by the governments with enough funds, they would not like to or not be able to produce safe agro-food. In addition, the most common challenge for local agro-food control officials is to establish Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships. As a transitional and non-independent department, Agro-food Safety Public Services is responsible for agro-food quality and safety supervision in a township where the agro-food supervision departments have not been set up in China. But in our investigation, most municipalities did not set up Agro-food Safety Public Services in their townships (85.4%). Moreover, the existing Agro-food Safety Public Services suffer from the lack of technicians, aging of personnel and technological backwardness. When farmers run into some technical problems, many Agro-food Safety Public Services in their townships are not able to help them (He, 2010). However, fewer municipal respondents considered the lack of technology to be the biggest problem (20.1%). The difference between the situations in towns and municipalities may be due to the fact that there are more technicians in municipal agro-food control systems, yet fewer of them are willing to go to the villages and towns to provide technical services. The reality in China is that the majority of agro-food is produced in villages and towns, where Agro-food Safety Public Services are crucial to control
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agro-food safety at the source. These services can solve not only the farmers’ technical problems but also the lack (or high cost) of information about this product attribute that is the fundamental cause of the market failure in food safety (Unnevehr, 1996). For farmers, Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships can help them improve product quality and sales. Therefore, the farmers might be more willing to produce safe products. Wu and He (2007) consider that agro-food quality testing and inspection systems should be strengthened in the existing Public Service. In this case, agro-food safety and quality can be ensured on the basis of test results. Another problem is multi-sectoral management. According to our survey, many groups and agencies are being established, such as agro-food safety leadership groups, specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authorities and testing departments within agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises. But in most municipalities, agro-food quality and safety supervision departments in charge of plantation, livestock and aquatic product safety were not unified as one department, which represents a type of management approach by the category of products. Meanwhile, another different type of management approach in China is the whole process management “from farm to table”, which involves many departments, such as the Health Ministry, Agriculture Department, Commerce Ministry, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Administration for Industry and Commerce, Customs Service and so on. Simultaneous adoption of the two management approaches by governments results in multimanagement, unclear responsibilities, inefficiency, fragmentation and the lack of a uniform coordination mechanism in many aspects (Wang, 2004). Additionally, different and uncoordinated management results in inefficient uses of resources and increased and sometimes conflicting burdens on operators and producers (Lei, Zheng, & Xiao, 2008). If specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authorities were set up according to product category or production process, and the existing scattered departments were also integrated within them, the new management might optimize the allocation of resources and improve efficiency. Also, the supervision would be better if more than one department or authority could claim to be in charge of agro-food control than if all could claim that it is not their fault. Our results also show some regional differences in the establishment of systems. This phenomenon is mentioned in many field surveys, such as farmer quality (Xin, Mao, & Luo, 2005) and issues including those of agriculture, farmers and rural areas (Liu, Cheng, Zhu, & Zeng, 2006). Generally, the situation in the east is better than in the central and the western regions. So it is not surprising to find the same situation in the establishment of agro-food control systems. According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (SCNPS, 2004), “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law.” Public authorities are therefore obligated to the equal application of the law to protect every citizen. Hence, all food operators should be uniformly treated by the authorities unless there is a valid reason to treat them differently (Heuru, 2003). A serious regional imbalance in the establishment of agrofood control systems is obviously against the principle of “giving priority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness” (CPC Central Committee, 1993). The differences among the four regions may result from the different natural resources and capital abundance and China’s earlier non-balanced development strategies. With the plans of Western Region Development, Revitalization of Northeast Old Industrial Base and the Rise of Central China proposed in China’s 10th Five-year Plan (2001e2005) for the National Economic and Social Development (NPC, 2001), nonbalanced coordinative development strategies replaced nonbalanced development strategies. Non-balanced coordinative
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development strategies that accept the views of traditional balance development strategies and non-balanced development strategies take into account regional differences, advantages, disadvantages and total benefits and, therefore, are probably more suitable for China (Zhang, 2003). 5. Conclusions Local governments paid great attention to agro-food safety, and local officials were actively structuring agro-food control systems. Yet many difficulties and problems still exist when implementing new control requirements in practice, and the results of this study show that local agro-food legislation, funds and Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships were seriously lacking, and multisectoral management reduced the efficiency of agro-food control. We also must acknowledge that agro-food operators located in different regions are being treated differently. New requirements set by the Food Safety Law make it a challenging task for local agrofood control officials to establish agro-food control systems, especially during the preliminary stage of establishment when resources are relatively scarce, and the system’s structure may be defective. It is meaningful to explore the implementation of the new requirements in question in this study, in China. Acknowledgment The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 09BJY069). References AQSIQ (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine). (2002). Notice (China) No 282/2002 of general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, of 16 May 2002. On further strengthening supervision and management of food quality and safety. Accessed 15.03.11. AQSIQ (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine). (2006). Regulation (China) No 86/2006 of general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, of 21 Feb 2006. On accreditation of laboratories and inspection bodies. Accessed 10.10.11. CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). (2010). CDC reports 1 in 6 get sick from foodborne illnesses each year, of 15 Dec 2010. Accessed 26.08.11. CGFDC (China Green Food Development Center). (2006). Green food authentication procedure, of 12 Dec 2006. Accessed 10.12.11. CPC (the Communist Party of China) Central Committee. (1993). CPC central committee on the establishment of a socialist market economic system, the decision of a number of issues. Accessed 25.04.11. Elliot, M. (6 Aug 2009). Senate approves more funds for food safety, farm subsidies. VendingMarketWatch.com. http://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/web/online/ VendingMarketWatch-News/Senate-Approves-More-Funds-For-Food-SafetyFarm-Subsidies/1$25004 Accessed 22.04.11. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). (2002). National food control systems: components and operations. In Multilateral trade negotiations on agriculture: A resource manual III. Agreement on the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS) and agreement on technical barriers to trade (TBT). Rome: Food Quality and Standards Service, Food and Nutrition Division, FAO. General Office of State Council. (2007). Notice (China) No 56/2007 of general office of state council, of 13 Aug 2007. On setting up a product quality and food safety leadership group. Accessed 10.09.11. He, H. (2010). An analysis of township agricultural service centers. Modern Business, 30,157. Heuru, K. (2003). Hyvä Hallinto. Helsinki: Edita Publishing Oy. Huang, Z. (2009). The effect of melamine event on China’s food exports and the countermeasures. Food and Nutrition in China, 7, 37e39.
Jin, S., Zhou, J., & Ye, J. (2008). Adoption of HACCP system in the Chinese food industry: a comparative analysis. Food Control, 19, 823e828. Jokela, S., Vehmas, K., & Lundén, J. (2009). Food control officials’ views on coercive measures in ensuring food safety. Archiv für Lebensmittelhygiene, 60, 130e134. Lei, B., Zheng, Y., & Xiao, G. (2008). Problems and countermeasures of agro-products quality and safety supervision in China. Anhui Agriculture, 12, 361e362. Li, C., Bian, X., & Wu, W. (2009). Research on legal supervision of quality and safety of China’s agricultural products. Journal of Qingdao Agricultural University (Social Science), 21(1), 22e27. Li, C., & Gan, J. (2011). Countermeasures to improve government supervision of quality and safety of agricultural products e theoretically based on the concept of service-oriented government. Journal of Qingdao Agricultural University (Social Science), 23(1), 23e27. Liu, G., Cheng, J., Zhu, C., & Zeng, H. (2006). Regional difference based on country side-farmer-agriculture problem in China. Research of Agricultural Modernization, 27(2), 126e130. Liu, H., & Xia, Y. (2010). Economic analysis and policy suggestions on quality safety of China’s farm products. Hubei Agricultural Sciences, 49(12), 3254e3256. Mensah, L. D., & Julien, D. (2011). Implementation of food safety management systems in the UK. Food Control, 22, 1216e1225. MOA (Ministry of Agriculture of the People Republic of China). (2011). Notice (China) No 7/2011 of ministry of agriculture bureau for agricultural food quality and safety, of 26 Jul, 2011. On accelerating the construction of township agrofood safety public services. Accessed 25.09.11. MOA (Ministry of Agriculture of the PRC) & AQSIQ (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine). (2002). Regulation (China) No 12/2002 of ministry of agriculture and general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, of 29 Apr 2002. On managing Safe Agro-food. Accessed 13.10.11. Neeliah, S., & Goburdhun, D. (2007). National food control systems: a review. Food Reviews International, 23(1), 35e51. NPC (National People’s Congress). (2001). China’s 10th five-year plan (2001e2005) for the national economic and social development, of 15 Mar 2001. Accessed 05.09.11. SCMP.com. (5 Dec 2008). The number of victims of toxic milk increasing largely. South China Morning Post Greater China Outlook. Accessed 16.03.11. SCNPS (Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress). (2004). Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. Accessed 23.04.11. SCNPS (Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress). (2006). Agricultural products quality and safety law of the People’s Republic of China. Accessed 25.05.11. SCNPS (Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress). (2009). Food safety law of the People’s Republic of China. Accessed 25.02.11. Tähkäpää, S., Kallioniemi, M., Korkeala, H., & Maijala, R. (2009). Food control officers perception of the challenges in implementing new food control requirements in Finland. Food Control, 20, 664e670. Tähkäpää, S., Maijala, R., Hörman, A., Poutiainen-Lindfors, U., & Korkeala, H. (2008). Reasons behind inadequate local food control resources. Food Control, 19, 403e411. Unnevehr, L. (1996). The benefits and costs of food safety policies: discussion. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 78(5), 1302e1304. Varzakas, T., Tsigarida, E., Apostolopoulos, C., Kalogridou-Vassiliadou, D., & Jukes, D. (2006). The role of the Hellenic food safety authority in Greece e implementation strategies. Food Control, 17, 957e965. Wan, X. (30 Mar 2010). Ying Du, the deputy director of development and reform commission: Western China’s per capita GDP was 7000 yuan less than Eastern China’s in 2000, and now the gap is 21000 yuan. National Business Daily. Accessed 13.10.11. Wang, L. (2004). Situation review and suggestions for the food safety administration in China. Food Science, 25(7), 187e192. Weimer, D. L., & Vining, A. R. (1999). Policy analysis: Concepts and practice (3rd ed).. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Wu, G., & He, J. (2007). Consideration on the construction of rural public fiscal system. Agricultural Economy, 5, 53e54. Xin, X., Mao, X., & Luo, W. (2005). Chinese farmers’ quality evaluation and regional differences. Chinese Rural Economy, 9, 4e9. Zhang, S. (2003). The strategic change from the balanced development to the nonbalanced and coordinative development. Tribune of Study, 6, 14e17. Zhang, W. (2006). Advanced textbook for SPSS statistical analysis (1st ed.). Higher Education Press. 218e227.
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Food Control journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodcont
Assessing the establishment of agro-food control systems based on a relevant officials’ survey in China Lijie Yang, Yongzhong Qian, Chen Chen, Fang Wang* Institute of Quality Standards & Testing Technology for Agro-Products, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 29 June 2011 Received in revised form 23 January 2012 Accepted 24 January 2012
With agro-food safety events happening frequently, China is taking measures to build agro-food control systems that include establishing an organization and agencies, enacting laws, allocating funds and so on. To assess the establishment of agro-food control systems, an electronic survey was sent to local agro-food control officials in 22 provinces of China. With descriptive analysis and factor analysis of 214 respondents, we determined an objective view of the establishment of municipal agro-food control systems in China. The study shows that there are great challenges to establishing these systems. Although local governments paid high attention to agro-food control by measures such as signing responsibility contracts and bringing the indicators of performance of agro-food control into the local government performance evaluation system, local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety were rarely enacted, Agro-food Safety Public Services were scarcely established in townships, and multi-sectoral management caused inefficiency. Moreover, 89.08% of the respondents indicated that the funds provided by local governments were not enough for agro-food control, which was also considered the biggest problem. It is apparent that there are great regional differences in the establishment of agro-food control systems. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Agro-food Quality and safety Food control system China
1. Introduction Food is a basic need; it is government’s responsibility to ensure that this need is met (FAO, 2002). Food safety is not only crucial to public health but also a very social problem. According to the new comprehensive estimates of foodborne illnesses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 48 million people (1 in 6 Americans) get sick, and 3000 die each year from foodborne illnesses in the United States (CDC, 2010). In 2008, according to a report in South China Morning Post Greater China Outlook, more than 290,000 infants suffered from an impeded urinary tract due to melamine (SCMP.com, 2008). The hazards associated with foods prompt governments to intervene in the food chain by establishing national food control systems (Neeliah & Goburdhun, 2007). However, food control generally had a relatively low priority and consisted of numerous small components with limited coordination (Varzakas, Tsigarida, Apostolopoulos, Kalogridou-Vassiliadou, & Jukes, 2006), such as administration, quality assurance systems,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 10 82106552; fax: þ86 10 82106551. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (F. Wang). 0956-7135/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.foodcont.2012.01.048
personnel, funds and so on. In developing countries, especially in China, the importance of the establishment of food control systems is just being recognized by the governments, but the elements of the food control systems are badly lacking. Therefore, the establishment of food control systems inevitably becomes a long-term process. Agro-food consumption accounts for more than 70% of the total food consumption in China, while highly processed food consumption accounts for less than 30%. In the past 10 years, more than 30 of approximately 50 exposed food safety events in China were agro-food safety events. Therefore, people are greatly concerned about agro-food safety issues. Presently, a series of agrofood scares (dioxin, melamine and malachite green) have seriously undermined Chinese public confidence in agro-food safety. In addition, China’s food exports suffered significantly because China cannot always meet international food safety standards (Jin, Zhou, & Ye, 2008). This issue was exposed at the 104th China Export Commodities Fair in 2008 with an approximately 30% decline in food export turnover after the melamine event (Huang, 2009). To reduce the loss, the Chinese government has established numerous measures to tighten up agro-food control. In China, the people’s governments are established at central, provincial, municipal, county and township levels. Agro-food control is mainly under the jurisdiction of the administrative
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departments for agriculture under the people’s governments at or above the county level. The agro-food control work of the administrative departments for agriculture is arranged by the people’s governments, but these local governments could get some technical or methodological guidance from the administrative departments for agriculture at higher or central levels. In 2006, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products (SCNPC, 2006) regulated the governments’ responsibilities for the quality and safety control of agricultural products, the actions of agricultural product operators and the requirements for supervisory departments. In the same year, the MOA (Ministry of Agriculture) Regulation 67/2006 on the labeling of livestock and poultry and record files of breeding, Regulation 70/2006 on the packaging and labeling of agricultural products and Regulation 71/2006 on the production place of agricultural products stipulated some specific requirements in three aspects according to the Law of the PRC on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products. In 2009, the Food Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China (SCNPC, 2009) regulated the formulation of quality and safety standards for agro-food in chapter three and the release of safety information about agro-food in chapter seven. Because the laws and regulations on food and agricultural products define the aims and not the specific means, the different control officials may apply the statutes differently (Tähkäpää, Kallioniemi, Korkeala, & Maijala, 2009). Furthermore, each article of the law confronts different challenges due to the different cultures, economics and environments among the regions, and the day-today changes encountered in the regions. With the laws on food and agricultural products being enforced, agencies, policies and some specific works of agro-food control systems are being set up throughout the whole country to maintain a high agro-food safety level, to achieve consistent procedures throughout China, and to facilitate trade among and between regions. It is necessary to explore how each aspect of the systems was established, which parts were of most concern to officials and whether there are regional differences in establishing agro-food control systems. This information is essential for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of new regulations and measures of the systems, for ensuring equal treatment and for prohibiting the possible unfair competition of agro-food operators or local authorities among the different areas (Tähkäpää et al., 2009). This study was conducted due to the current, significant changes both in the legislation and structures of the agro-food control systems. The study aimed to identify the difficulties and problems that hindered the establishment of these systems. Overcoming these difficulties and solving these problems will help to improve the agro-food safety level. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Survey A cross-sectional study, conducted in 17 provinces, 4 autonomous regions and 2 municipalities directly under the Central Government of China1 from March 2009 to April 2010, surveyed the establishment of agro-food control systems at all levels. In this paper, only the municipal data were analyzed. The survey group was composed of officials and researchers from the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission), the Ministry of Agriculture and the Research Center of Quality
1 Municipalities directly under the Central Government are different from general municipalities. They have the same administrative level as provinces and autonomous regions in China.
Standard for Agro-Produce. The first step was to investigate the agro-food control system in Shandong province. The result contributed to the design of the questionnaire. Next, agro-food control officials in Jiangsu (province, municipalities and counties) were selected for the pretest. Third, based on the useful feed-back information from the pretest, the questionnaire was revised. Finally, we collected the first-hand data through electronic questionnaires answered by agro-food control officials in administrative departments for agriculture at and above the county level. 2.2. Questionnaire The questionnaire about the establishment of agro-food control systems consisted of 33 questions, which were organized into four sections: agricultural development, groups and agencies in the systems, relevant policies to improve agro-food quality and safety and specific work in agro-food control. Of the 33 total questions, 23 questions in the later 3 sections were selected as original evaluating indicators. The Bureau for Agricultural Food Quality and Safety under the Ministry of Agriculture informed provincial Departments of Agriculture of our survey on agro-food quality and safety in September 2009. In the notice, the administrative departments for agriculture under the people’s government at provincial, municipal and county levels were required to download electronic questionnaires from the website of China Agricultural Quality Standards and answer the questions. The provincial Departments of Agriculture collected all the questionnaires and sent them to the Bureau for Agricultural Food Quality and Safety. In total, 313 electronic questionnaires were required to be answered by the municipal administrative departments for agriculture, and 253 were submitted, of which 214 were found to be usable. The 214 study respondents consisted of officials from 202 of 340 cities and 12 of 74 districts,2 who were in charge of agricultural product quality and safety supervision. Fig. 1 illustrates the number of valid questionnaires received from each province and the number of municipalities under the control of each province. The regional distribution percentage of the responses from all the municipalities situated in each region3 was as follows: Eastern China 50.0%, Central China 59.0%, Northeastern China 52.8% and Western China 49.0%. The 214 respondents represented more than half of all municipalities in China. 2.3. Statistical analyses The questionnaire responses were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2003 software (Microsoft Corporation; Redmond, WA, USA) and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 18.0 for Windows (SPSS Inc.; Chicago, IL, USA). Means with standard deviations (SDs), frequencies and percentages of the responses in each category were calculated. Factor analysis was performed to comprehensively assess the establishment and ranking of municipal agro-food control systems. Regional differences were calculated based on the regional response rate and total scores.
2 The districts of municipalities directly under the Central Government have the same administrative levels as normal municipalities in China. 3 According to the China Statistic Yearbook (2009), China consists of four economic areas: Eastern China, Central China, Northeastern China and Western China. Eastern China includes the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan; Central China includes the provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi; Northeastern China includes the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang; Western China includes the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Xizang, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi.
L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
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Fig. 1. Valid questionnaires received from 21 provinces and 2 municipalities directly under the central government of China.
In factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was adopted to examine the partial correlation among and between the variables, whose value was set at >0.70. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was used to examine whether the correlation matrix was a unit matrix, and the statistical significance was set at <0.05. The total scores are calculated by the model:
F ¼ b1 *F1 þ b2 *F2 . þ bi *Fi
ði ¼ 1; 2.kÞ
where k is the number of selected principal factors. If the selected principal factors could cumulatively account for 85% of the total variance, it indicated that these factors contained nearly the entire message of all the original indicators. Fi (i ¼ 1, 2 . k) are factor scores. Factor scores are evaluated in a scaled form in which each variable is transformed into a set of standardized and dimensionless variables (zero mean and standard deviation equal to one), and then, taking the score coefficients of all the new variables in the corresponding factor as weights, the weighted sums of the new set of variables are calculated to obtain the factor scores. The factor score coefficients are estimated by a regression method. The principal factors are extracted by principal component analysis. bi (i ¼ 1, 2 . k) represents the proportions of eigenvalues of the correlation matrix, which are variance proportions. The factor scores are multiplied with bi as the weights of the corresponding principal factors and added to obtain the total scores of the samples (Zhang, 2006). 3. Results 3.1. Groups and agencies Table 1 shows the groups and agencies set up in the agro-food control systems, which indicated how the systems had taken
shape initially. Most of the municipalities (83.5%) had agro-food safety leadership groups that could coordinate all agro-food quality and safety supervision departments and arrange the important actions when an agro-food safety event happened (General Office of State Council, 2007). Although 68.4% of the municipalities
Table 1 Groups and agencies in agro-food control systems. Questions
Answers
Subject (no.)
Percent (%)
Is an agro-food safety leadership group established? Is a specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authority established? Is a department for agricultural law enforcement established? Is an Agro-food Safety Public Service established in the townships? How many testing agencies are established under the government? (number)
Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes No Less than 10 10e19 20e29 More than 29 0e2 3e4 5e6 7e8 0e4 5e9 10e14 15e19 More than 19
177 35 145 67 109 103 30 175 166
83.5 16.5 68.4 31.6 51.4 48.6 14.6 85.4 84.7
26 2 2
13.3 1.0 1.0
145 13 3 3 123 19 11 1 2
88.4 7.9 1.8 1.8 78.9 12.2 7.0 0.6 1.3
And how many of the testing agencies obtained the CMA? (number)
How many agro-food wholesale markets established testing departments? (number)
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established specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authorities, the average number of persons engaged in supervision was less than 8, and 82.2% of the respondents indicated that the plant, livestock and aquatic product safety management were scattered under different authorities. Meanwhile, 51.4% of the municipalities established departments for agricultural law enforcement. However, only 14.6% set up Agro-food Safety Public Services in the townships, which are mainly responsible for the agro-food safety training of farmers, agro-food control technology extension, routine inspections of agro-food production processes and the implementation of agro-food control measures (MOA, 2011). This enquiry suggests that the grass-roots services received the lowest attention and that the establishment of Agro-food Safety Public Services in the townships was the most common difficulty. The numbers of testing agencies under the governments varied from 0 to 67, but in most municipalities (84.7%), the number was less than 10. Further, the number of testing agencies with the China Metrological Accreditation (CMA) (AQSIQ, 2006) was mostly no more than 2, and the testing departments contained in agro-food wholesale market administrations were less. In 78.9% of the municipalities, the number of testing departments was less than 4. Compared to that, the average number of all agro-food wholesale markets was 26.5, according to our survey. According to the Law of the PRC on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products, agro-food wholesale markets are encouraged to establish a department for testing agricultural product safety. 3.2. Policies and measures Of all the municipalities, 85.6% brought the indicators of performance of agro-food control into local government performance evaluation systems,4 and 86% of the governments signed responsibility contracts with agro-food quality and safety supervision departments and the governments at lower levels. The two above-mentioned measures were the most common measures taken by the governments to improve agro-food quality and safety control. The implementation of these measures reflected the governments’ strong attention to food control. In addition, 57.2% of the investigated municipalities included the budget for agro-food control in the control systems, 54.2% included preferential policies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food, and 57.8% required farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives to sign an agro-food safety commitment in which the legal responsibilities of farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives were emphasized to raise their agro-food safety awareness. Although governments attached importance to agro-food safety, some shortages in the establishment of an agro-food control system existed. Only 25.0% of the municipalities enacted local laws or regulations relevant to agro-food quality and safety, and only 27.4% of the municipalities allowed agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises to enjoy preferential policies or subsidies for the establishment of their testing departments (Table 2). Therefore, two considerable challenges in the establishment of the control system were to formulate local legislations and preferential policies or subsidies.
Table 2 Relevant policies or measure to improve agro-food quality and safety. Questions
Answers
Subject (no.)
Percent (%)
Does the government sign a responsibility contract with the supervision department and the governments at lower levels? Does the government bring the indicators of performance of agro-food control into the government performance evaluation system? Does the supervision department sign an agro-food safety commitment with farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives? Does the government approve a budget for agro-food control? Are there any preferential policies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food included in the system? Do agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises enjoy any preferential policies or subsidies for the establishment of their testing departments? Are local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety enacted?
Yes No
178 29
86.0 14.0
Yes No
178 30
85.6 14.4
Yes No
119 87
57.8 42.2
Yes No Yes No
119 89 104 88
57.2 42.8 54.2 45.8
Yes No
49 130
27.4 72.6
Yes No
52 156
25.0 75.0
followed by a further quantitative analysis for agro-food that tested positive for chemical residues (59.4%). Other supervision work included the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) and the ISO series systems certifications (53.7%) and traceability systems (50.3%). The biggest challenge for the governments’ supervision work was to set up an agro-food safety market access system,5 which merely 37.5% of all the municipalities established, whereas the system was first introduced for wheat flour, rice, edible vegetable oil, soy sauce and vinegar by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in early 2002 (AQSIQ, 2002). Among those municipalities whose governments approved budgets for agro-food control (57.2%), 70.2% had an annual budget of less than 1 million yuan ($154,400), and only 10.9% of the respondents indicated that the funds could meet their demands. When the respondents were asked whether it was difficult to control agro-food quality and safety effectively, most respondents (93.7%) had a positive response. Lack of funds was indicated to be the biggest problem (42.2% of the respondents), whereas lack of technology was not considered to be a big problem (only 20.1% of the respondents consider it as the biggest problem). In 75.4% of the municipalities, the number of farmer production enterprises keeping production records was less than 100, and the average number of this kind of enterprise was 74. In comparison, the average number of all farmer production enterprises was up to 534, according to our survey. This statistic shows that only approximately one in seven farmer production enterprises paid attention to agro-food safety in the production process. Moreover, the average number of products certified as Safe Agro-food and Green Food,6 according to the corresponding certification systems (MOA & AQSIQ, 2002; CGFDC, 2006), were 95.4 and 44.3,
3.3. Specific work Table 3 shows some specific work in agro-food control. The most common supervision work was routine monitoring (93.3%),
4 In government performance evaluation systems, total scores could be calculated through a statistical analysis of all evaluating indicators.
5 The agro-food safety market access system mainly covers three areas: (1) A food production licensing system will be implemented, (2) food production will be subject to mandatory inspection, and (3) food that has been inspected and found up to standard will be granted the “QS” label and given market access to assure consumers that it is “quality safe”. 6 Green Food, a kind of high quality food, is produced according to a series of specific standards whose level is between the standards of Safe Agro-food and Organic Food.
L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
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respectively. Relative to the number of farmer production enterprises, these two average numbers were very small.
3.5. Ranking the scores of the municipalities based on factor analysis
3.4. Regional characteristics
The data matrix of 214 samples for all the above 23 variables was analyzed by the factor analysis. The results of the KMO measure of sampling adequacy (0.705) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Sig. ¼ 0.000) show that the partial correlation among and between variables is strong enough and that the correlation matrix is not a unit matrix. Therefore, factor analysis is applicable to the data matrix. The first 14 principal factors (k ¼ 14) cumulatively account for 81.63% of the total variance, while the rest of the data dispersion could be considered as random. Factor 1 was the largest contributor, explaining 16.7% of the variability, while Factor 2 could account for 9.8% of the variability (Table 5). Safe Agro-food, Green Food and system certification were found to contribute to the major loadings to Factor 1; government performance evaluation system, responsibility contract and agro-food safety commitment contributed to the major loadings to Factor 2; the traceability system, market access system and leadership group contributed to the major loadings to Factor 3; and other variables also majorly loaded on some principal factor from Factor 4 to 14. Each variable was a positive contributor to the major load of its principal factor. Each municipality’s total score is calculated by the model of factor analysis. Out of 214 municipalities, 196 were selected for factor analysis. Of these, 1.0% of the municipalities had the highest
Table 4 shows the regional characteristics of the agro-food control systems in municipalities in China. Obviously, some regional differences existed. All of the investigated municipalities in Northeastern China had agro-food safety leadership groups, while approximately 80% of the municipalities in the other three regions had such groups. In Central China, 38.6% of the municipalities had preferential policies or subsidies for testing departments in agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises, while none of the investigated municipalities in Northeastern China had such policies. Moreover, in Eastern China, 72.9% of the governments approved budgets for agro-food control, and the annual per capita fund was more than 0.44 yuan ($0.07), which was nearly 10 times the amount fund in Western China. Overall, the governments of Eastern China established the best agro-food control systems in the four regions, with the highest implementation rate of the 17 enquired supervision measures, including system certification (80.0%), quantitative analysis (83.1%), the average number of farmer production enterprises making the production record (126), the average number of products certified as Safe Agro-food (156) and so on. In contrast, Western China established the worst systems, mainly in the 13 enquired supervision measures, including agro-food safety market access systems (20.8%), traceability systems (31.9%), the average number of products certified as Green Food (22.4) and so on. This result suggests that a rather big gap of regional difference existed between Eastern China and Western China, which may be very difficult to narrow and probably would get wider because of the widening gap of absolute development speeds between the two regions (Wan, 2010).
Table 3 Specific work in agro-food control. Questions
Answers
Subject (no.)
Percent (%)
Is agro-food quality and safety monitored routinely? If agro-food tests positive for chemical residues, will there be a further quantitative analysis? Are the GAP, HACCP and ISO series systems certifications implemented? Is a traceability system established?
Yes No Yes No
195 14 92 63
93.3 6.7 59.4 40.7
Yes No Yes No Yes No Less than 1 1e2 2e3 More than 3 Less than 100 100e199 200e299 300e399 More than 399 Less than 100 100e199 200e299 300e399 400e499 More than 499 Less than 100 100e199 200e299 More than 299
87 75 100 99 78 130 80 14 2 18 86 14 4 7 3 145 26 15 6 3 4 154 13 4 2
53.7 46.3 50.3 49.8 37.5 62.5 70.2 12.3 1.8 15.8 75.4 12.3 3.5 6.1 2.6 72.9 13.1 7.5 3.0 1.5 2.0 89.0 7.5 2.3 1.2
Is an agro-food safety market access system established? If the government approves a budget for agro-food control, how much is the annual budget?(million yuan) How many farmer production enterprises keep production records? (number)
How many agricultural products are certified as Safe Agro-food? (number)
How many agricultural products are certified as Green Food? (number)
Table 4 Regional characteristics of the agro-food control systems in the municipalities in China (n ¼ 214) based on the enquiry. Situation
Eastern China
Central China
North eastern China
Western China
Our food control system includes Specialized supervision authority Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships Department for agricultural law enforcement Agro-food safety leadership group Government performance evaluation system Responsibility contract Agro-food safety commitment Budget for agro-food control Local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety Preferential policies or subsidies for the establishment of testing departments Preferential policies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food System certification Routine monitoring Quantitative analysis Agro-food safety market access system Traceability system How much/How many Testing agencies under the government Testing agencies with the CMA Agro-food wholesale markets with testing departments Annual budgets for agro-food control Farmer production enterprises keeping production records Agricultural products certified as Safe Agro-food Agricultural products certified as Green Food
(%) 64.4 26.1
(%) 64.6 12.8
(%) 84.2 5.3
(%) 70.8 7.1
63.4
53.1
21.1
46.6
82.2 90.3
83.3 83.3
100.00 88.2
80.8 81.7
90.1 71.0 72.9 28.6
81.3 62.5 56.3 25.5
88.2 37.5 33.3 15.8
84.5 46.6 48.6 23.6
32.8
38.6
0.0
19.7
71.4
52.3
23.1
43.1
80.0 97.2 83.1 44.9 61.2 Mean 7.4 1.7 5.3
53.9 91.7 61.0 58.3 66.0 Mean 5.0 1.1 2.6
45.5 88.9 50.0 21.1 37.5 Mean 4.9 0.7 3.0
29.8 91.6 28.9 20.8 31.9 Mean 3.7 0.7 1.9
208.5 125.8
57.0 65.5
16.0 100.3
11.3 31.1
155.8
66.1
109.6
46.2
64.3
35.5
87.1
22.4
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L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
Table 5 Loading matrix of rotated factor. Variables
Green Food Safe Agro-food System certification Government performance evaluation system Responsibility contract Agro-food safety commitment Traceability system Market access system Leadership group Governmental testing agencies Testing agencies with the CMA Quantitative analysis Production records Agro-food wholesale markets with testing departments Preferential policies or subsidies for testing departments Annual budgets Local laws and regulations Budget for agro-food control Specialized supervision authority Department for law enforcement Public Services in townships Routine monitoring Preferential policies or subsidies for certification of agro-food % of Variance a
Factor 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
0.846a 0.828 0.459 0.005
0.010 0.025 0.091 0.857
0.052 0.055 0.216 0.025
0.048 0.012 0.222 0.049
0.000 0.160 0.024 0.088
0.073 0.138 0.263 0.025
0.132 0.119 0.190 0.123
0.132 0.045 0.250 0.056
0.029 0.051 0.023 0.069
0.056 0.071 0.158 0.097
0.124 0.111 0.290 0.033
0.113 0.035 0.171 0.060
0.004 0.012 0.250 0.027
0.025 0.057 0.178 0.087
0.026 0.086 0.034 0.069 0.005 0.017 0.148 0.083 0.145 0.448
0.849 0.519 0.051 0.073 0.351 0.011 0.015 0.042 0.037 0.068
0.077 0.298 0.816 0.621 0.588 0.071 0.076 0.079 0.060 0.183
0.052 0.089 0.165 0.107 0.077 0.904 0.152 0.056 0.004 0.381
0.012 0.206 0.126 0.111 0.027 0.110 0.728 0.696 0.162 0.132
0.096 0.102 0.020 0.143 0.160 0.018 0.307 0.059 0.851 0.489
0.028 0.096 0.040 0.162 0.085 0.005 0.247 0.140 0.047 0.002
0.077 0.104 0.034 0.453 0.139 0.092 0.133 0.026 0.088 0.141
0.020 0.100 0.054 0.208 0.326 0.048 0.109 0.352 0.052 0.114
0.005 0.379 0.087 0.027 0.253 0.091 0.192 0.179 0.148 0.012
0.014 0.164 0.019 0.137 0.078 0.044 0.025 0.049 0.073 0.240
0.007 0.057 0.156 0.272 0.317 0.047 0.089 0.138 0.048 0.177
0.052 0.125 0.033 0.096 0.041 0.052 0.034 0.286 0.051 0.127
0.089 0.276 0.041 0.107 0.055 0.036 0.113 0.029 0.123 0.032
0.022
0.108
0.099
0.018
0.026
0.027
0.914
0.062
0.099
0.002
0.059
0.037
0.041
0.107
0.372 0.161 0.081 0.074 0.156 0.071 0.017 0.109
0.082 0.158 0.064 0.056 0.056 0.078 0.048 0.046
0.041 0.001 0.072 0.015 0.031 0.162 0.059 0.017
0.381 0.158 0.077 0.094 0.022 0.037 0.026 0.024
0.259 0.124 0.091 0.024 0.016 0.028 0.103 0.051
0.105 0.079 0.077 0.133 0.029 0.002 0.023 0.114
0.426 0.080 0.130 0.028 0.042 0.040 0.023 0.130
0.205 0.863 0.096 0.020 0.003 0.043 0.020 0.063
0.197 0.070 0.886 0.071 0.047 0.127 0.013 0.001
0.103 0.010 0.068 0.856 0.007 0.176 0.045 0.071
0.174 0.018 0.061 0.030 0.920 0.045 0.064 0.022
0.014 0.064 0.120 0.171 0.037 0.868 0.016 0.028
0.124 0.011 0.004 0.027 0.064 0.023 0.945 0.014
0.153 0.093 0.001 0.083 0.031 0.037 0.006 0.935
16.723
9.847
6.955
6.031
5.762
5.373
4.817
4.470
4.072
3.992
3.735
3.511
3.288
3.058
Bold values indicate the highest loading.
total scores (F > 0.9); 8.7% had higher total scores (0.9 F > 0.3); 33.2% had common total scores (0.3 F > 0); 50.0% had lower total scores (0 > F 0.3); and 7.1% had the lowest total scores (0.3 > F 0.6). Zero points indicated an average level. According to Fig. 2 it could be concluded that the total scores also showed some regional differences. The municipalities whose total scores were above 0 points accounted for 62.1%, 55.6%, 25.0% and 20.3%, respectively, of the total municipalities in Eastern China, Central China, Northeastern China and Western China. Eastern China included all the highest scoring municipalities (F > 0.9), and 22.7% of the municipalities in this region had higher total scores (0.9 F > 0.3). In comparison, none of the municipalities in Western China had a total score higher than 0.3. The result
Fig. 2. Total scores of the municipal agro-food control systems in four regions based on factor analysis (n ¼ 196).
suggested that the closer to the coast the region is located, the better agro-food control systems were established, generally because the coastal areas have a prosperous economy and open information communication, which are crucial and essential to establish the system. 4. Discussion Governments seem to pay great attention to agro-food control. By signing responsibility contracts, municipal governments require supervision departments and the governments at lower levels to strictly carry out their obligations of supervision. The measure of bringing the indicators of performance of agro-food control into local government performance evaluation systems encourages officials to improve their management of agro-food quality and safety to receive a high performance review. In addition, due to the agro-food safety commitment signed with the supervision departments, farmer production enterprises or specialized farmer cooperatives guarantee agro-food safety on their credit. As a measure of public administration (Li & Gan, 2011), the governments’ agro-food control is aimed to ensure public interest, so people are more likely to believe government agencies than any profit group. Finally, the governments’ high attention will bring out a positive social effect. According to Tähkäpää, Maijala, Hörman, Poutiainen-Lindfors, and Korkeala (2008), participation in decision-making and a higher awareness of governmental and local authorities as decision-makers about food control seem to have a positive effect on food control resourcing. When the respondents were asked to rearrange five factors, including the lack of technology, the shortage of funds, multi-sectoral management, governments’ insufficient priorities and others, according to their difficulty in agro-food control, the least respondents (10.3%) indicated that the shortage of enough priorities was the biggest problem.
L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230
However, the governments’ high attention is not clearly reflected in local legislation. A few of the investigated municipalities enacted local laws on food or agricultural products or built the departments for agricultural law enforcement. Compared with the food legislation of developed countries, relevant laws need improvement in China. China lacks unified standards in the legislation of standard systems, inspection systems and market supervision, and the enforcement of food safety laws is weak (Li, Bian, & Wu, 2009). Some researchers (Mensah & Julien, 2011; Weimer & Vining, 1999) believe that the statutory regulatory approach is particularly deemed necessary because by its nature of food, where it is considered to be a good based on experience, and because of the inability of consumers to determine food safety before purchase or consumption due to information asymmetry. If agro-food control is implemented mainly through local commitment, not legislation, there may be a risk of weak enforceability, and officials may have free rein of agro-food control. In addition, legislation can confirm the forbiddance and the punishment for illegal operation. As a coercive measure, legislation is perceived to be a useful tool in food control by most food control officials (Jokela, Vehmas, & Lundén, 2009). Contrary to the great attention paid by the governments to food safety, the shortage of funds was regarded as the biggest problem by 42.2% of the respondents. Of the investigated governments, 42.8% did not approve budgets for agro-food control, and relevant preferential policies or subsidies were not widely promulgated. This means that if local agro-food quality and safety supervision departments want to control agro-food safety, they must solve the problem of the fund shortage by themselves, which is very difficult for agro-food control officials. In addition, the lack of fiscal support may bring about some further problems, such as the lack of personnel training, the low frequency of tests and few certifications of safe agro-food. In the preliminary construction phase of these systems, fiscal support is necessary, and increased funding for food safety is a good step (Elliot, 2009). For operators or producers, production of safe agro-food has some positive externalities, including an overflow of economic income, covering the cost of optimizing the ecological environment and other industries’ external cost (Liu & Xia, 2010), which increase the cost of production. Currently, a great challenge hindering the compliance of enterprises to food safety management systems is the high cost of development and implementation (Mensah and Julien, 2011). If these enterprises are not supported by the governments with enough funds, they would not like to or not be able to produce safe agro-food. In addition, the most common challenge for local agro-food control officials is to establish Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships. As a transitional and non-independent department, Agro-food Safety Public Services is responsible for agro-food quality and safety supervision in a township where the agro-food supervision departments have not been set up in China. But in our investigation, most municipalities did not set up Agro-food Safety Public Services in their townships (85.4%). Moreover, the existing Agro-food Safety Public Services suffer from the lack of technicians, aging of personnel and technological backwardness. When farmers run into some technical problems, many Agro-food Safety Public Services in their townships are not able to help them (He, 2010). However, fewer municipal respondents considered the lack of technology to be the biggest problem (20.1%). The difference between the situations in towns and municipalities may be due to the fact that there are more technicians in municipal agro-food control systems, yet fewer of them are willing to go to the villages and towns to provide technical services. The reality in China is that the majority of agro-food is produced in villages and towns, where Agro-food Safety Public Services are crucial to control
229
agro-food safety at the source. These services can solve not only the farmers’ technical problems but also the lack (or high cost) of information about this product attribute that is the fundamental cause of the market failure in food safety (Unnevehr, 1996). For farmers, Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships can help them improve product quality and sales. Therefore, the farmers might be more willing to produce safe products. Wu and He (2007) consider that agro-food quality testing and inspection systems should be strengthened in the existing Public Service. In this case, agro-food safety and quality can be ensured on the basis of test results. Another problem is multi-sectoral management. According to our survey, many groups and agencies are being established, such as agro-food safety leadership groups, specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authorities and testing departments within agro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises. But in most municipalities, agro-food quality and safety supervision departments in charge of plantation, livestock and aquatic product safety were not unified as one department, which represents a type of management approach by the category of products. Meanwhile, another different type of management approach in China is the whole process management “from farm to table”, which involves many departments, such as the Health Ministry, Agriculture Department, Commerce Ministry, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Administration for Industry and Commerce, Customs Service and so on. Simultaneous adoption of the two management approaches by governments results in multimanagement, unclear responsibilities, inefficiency, fragmentation and the lack of a uniform coordination mechanism in many aspects (Wang, 2004). Additionally, different and uncoordinated management results in inefficient uses of resources and increased and sometimes conflicting burdens on operators and producers (Lei, Zheng, & Xiao, 2008). If specialized agro-food quality and safety supervision authorities were set up according to product category or production process, and the existing scattered departments were also integrated within them, the new management might optimize the allocation of resources and improve efficiency. Also, the supervision would be better if more than one department or authority could claim to be in charge of agro-food control than if all could claim that it is not their fault. Our results also show some regional differences in the establishment of systems. This phenomenon is mentioned in many field surveys, such as farmer quality (Xin, Mao, & Luo, 2005) and issues including those of agriculture, farmers and rural areas (Liu, Cheng, Zhu, & Zeng, 2006). Generally, the situation in the east is better than in the central and the western regions. So it is not surprising to find the same situation in the establishment of agro-food control systems. According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (SCNPS, 2004), “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China are equal before the law.” Public authorities are therefore obligated to the equal application of the law to protect every citizen. Hence, all food operators should be uniformly treated by the authorities unless there is a valid reason to treat them differently (Heuru, 2003). A serious regional imbalance in the establishment of agrofood control systems is obviously against the principle of “giving priority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness” (CPC Central Committee, 1993). The differences among the four regions may result from the different natural resources and capital abundance and China’s earlier non-balanced development strategies. With the plans of Western Region Development, Revitalization of Northeast Old Industrial Base and the Rise of Central China proposed in China’s 10th Five-year Plan (2001e2005) for the National Economic and Social Development (NPC, 2001), nonbalanced coordinative development strategies replaced nonbalanced development strategies. Non-balanced coordinative
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development strategies that accept the views of traditional balance development strategies and non-balanced development strategies take into account regional differences, advantages, disadvantages and total benefits and, therefore, are probably more suitable for China (Zhang, 2003). 5. Conclusions Local governments paid great attention to agro-food safety, and local officials were actively structuring agro-food control systems. Yet many difficulties and problems still exist when implementing new control requirements in practice, and the results of this study show that local agro-food legislation, funds and Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships were seriously lacking, and multisectoral management reduced the efficiency of agro-food control. We also must acknowledge that agro-food operators located in different regions are being treated differently. New requirements set by the Food Safety Law make it a challenging task for local agrofood control officials to establish agro-food control systems, especially during the preliminary stage of establishment when resources are relatively scarce, and the system’s structure may be defective. It is meaningful to explore the implementation of the new requirements in question in this study, in China. Acknowledgment The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 09BJY069). References AQSIQ (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine). (2002). Notice (China) No 282/2002 of general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, of 16 May 2002. On further strengthening supervision and management of food quality and safety.
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