BEIJING - China needs to better integrate its fractured regulatory system to improve its food safety record, a top health official said Friday, as the military warned that unsafe food could undermine its ability to fight.
Worries at home and around the world have heightened in recent days as a growing number of Chinese products have been found tainted with dangerous levels of toxins and chemicals. Blurred lines of authority and responsibilities divided among at least six agengies often enable the country's countless illegal operations to escape detection.
"To solve the problem, we must make laws, we must amend laws. The purpose of this is to strengthen cooperation among government bodies and together, strengthen supervision," Vice Health Minister Wang Longde said on the sidelines of a news conference, in a rare high-level comment on China's attempts to regain consumer confidence.
Wang's comments came on the same day an official newspaper reported that the People's Liberation Army -- the world's largest military -- has ordered improved safety checks and will buy food only from suppliers who pass local government hygiene and safety tests.
"To strengthen food safety is to guarantee the PLA's combat capacity," the China Daily quoted Zhou Pengjun, an official with the General Logistics Department, as saying in a front-page story.
All suppliers of food to the PLA's 2.3 million servicemen and women will have to pass safety and hygiene tests, the report said, reflecting worries over small or unregulated businesses who make their money by using cheap ingredients or substitutes.
A report issued Friday by the Beijing Municipal Health Inspection Institute said about 60 percent of 21,200 restaurants inspected in the Chinese capital had hygiene conditions that posed "some risk of contamination."
Another 3 percent prepared food in an environment that had "a high risk of contamination, even the possibility of causing food poisoning," the institute said.
In recent weeks, China has executed the former head of its drug regulation agency for taking bribes and banned the use of a chemical found in antifreeze in the production of toothpaste.
But although the production of toothpaste with diethylene glycol -- a thickening agent in antifreeze -- has been prohibited, companies will still be able to sell their current supplies domestically, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine was quoted as saying.
"The government did not advise removing the toothpaste containing the chemical on sale from shelves," the unnamed official was quoted as saying by Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post.
"Consumers are assured that those toothpaste brands are safe," said the official, who did not identify the brands.
