Food and drug safety heads online

In a government bid to ease consumers' concerns over product safety an online data center will be launched in Beijing to provide safety information on food, drugs, health care items and cosmetics.

The data center will be available online by the end of this year for the public as well as corporations and enforcement authorities, said Zhang Zhikuan, director of Beijing Food and Drug Administration, as reported by Beijing Youth Daily.

The data center, which was announced this week at the Beijing Food Safety Publicity Week, will provide food information, drug's testing and approval certificates, consumer alerts and background on companies.

According to Zhang, the data center will form a comprehensive information network to facilitate an effective supervision over drugs.

The F&D administration also announced increased regulations for food producers. Personnels found to have produced unsafe food will be banned from the food industry for their life.

The administration also used the food safety event to form an expert committee for evaluating potentially harmful foods and other products.

Some dairy and meat products produced by large companies can already be monitored by the current food safety tracking system in Beijing.

An electronic tracking supervision system has also been launched for corporations that produce, deliver and sell commonly used medicines.