Food sold over the Internet will be included in a food monitoring system for the first time, Beijing Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) told the Global Times Monday.
Chen Qian, director of the CDC's food microorganism lab, said that their monitoring will start with five types of food sold online. This includes baby formula and cereal food, milk powder, puffed snack food, cooked meat and raw aquatic animal products.
"We hope that through covering online shops, which was a blank area of our monitoring before, we can know more about the safety risks there, so we can better prevent food poisoning incidents," Chen said.
"We will choose products from major Internet shops which have a large sales volume and test them to see if they contain pathogens," said Chen.
"If we find that there is a food safety hazard, we'll report it to the municipal health bureau and the industrial and commercial bureau," she said.
Most customers who choose to buy food online are attracted by the convenience and choice.
"Online shopping saves time and money because they have discounts, but sometimes I'm concerned because I haven't heard of the brand," said Du Ying, 37, who often buys beef and milk products.
"It's hard for customers to identify the license of the online shop, and the certification of purchasing agents is also hard to check, so this policy is useful to ensure safety of online food sales," said Fan Zhihong, associate professor on food safety in China Agricultural University.
Industrial and commercial bureaus in China investigated and punished 67,000 cases which did not meet food safety standards during the first three quarters of 2012, said a report on the website of Guangming Daily on November 17, 2012.
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