Scientists and experts from China and the United States are working together to identify food fraud and other food-related issues.

Recently, China's Ministry of Agriculture and US Pharmacopeia, a global health organization that sets standards for medicines and food ingredients, held a joint workshop in Shanghai. The session covered topics ranging from the formal risk assessment of foods to protective measures intended to combat food fraud.

More than 30 officials and senior scientists from 16 different quality and safety risk assessment laboratories at the China's Ministry of Agriculture, as well as leaders and experts from the USP Shanghai laboratories participated in the event.

US, China work together against food fraud

This year, USP launched a guidance document globally on food fraud mitigation, which is designed to assist manufacturers and regulators in identifying food ingredients that are most vulnerable to fraud so as to prevent economically motivated adulteration.

During the workshop, members of the China delegation said they have the interest in working with USP to explore possible applications of this vulnerability assessment tool to agricultural products.

Besides that, experts and officials also engaged in vigorous discussion about risk assessment and USP's public standards for food ingredients, food integrity and food fraud prevention.

Earlier this year, USP and China's Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA) worked together to translate the Food Chemicals Codex 7, science-based testing standards and specifications for food ingredients, into Chinese. The FCC was then published by USP.

The two have also worked together on a series of food-related workshops and training courses in the country.

So far, China has the second-largest number of USP's nearly 900 international expert volunteers team.

"Food and drug quality and safety issues always have broader impacts in the world," said Chen Junshi, chief adviser at CFSA, who is also a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"The collaboration with USP, such as sharing the advanced experiences and carrying out meaningful dialogues, will help promote the progress of food and drug standards."

"We are pleased to engage in such positive conversations with China's agriculture ministry, and look forward to future collaboration on topics of shared interest," said K.V. Surendranath, PhD, USP senior vice-president for international site operations and interim general manager for USP-China. 

(From China Daily, 2014-12-28)