Some quality inspection bureaus at the county-level are ill-equipped and lacking in the talent needed to do their job, an official at China's food safety watchdog acknowledged on Monday, while promising that spending on local bureaus would be increased over the next five years.
Zhi Shuping, minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), said the government will come up with polices to improve spending on county-level bureaus in under-developed regions as part of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).
In pointing to a recent study that showed that the work of local quality supervision bureaus was less than satisfactory, Zhi explained that investigators had been sent to Hunan and Yunnan provinces where they found that some people in charge did not have the professional knowledge or equipment for proper food safety inspections.
On Monday, AQSIQ announced that it is establishing a science and technology committee to advise the administration on national policies and standards to protect against unsafe food and consumer products.
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