The State Council has released a guideline for work on food safety in 2017, with the goal of ensuring people’s health and safety.

The move is aimed at addressing people’s major concerns on food safety, improving related departments’ ability to manage and ensure food safety while pushing forward supply-side structural reform, in order to help build a well-off society in an all-around way.

To achieve the target, the guideline urged efforts to improve related laws and regulations on food safety, develop and revise national standards in key fields of food safety, carry out measures to prevent pollution in agricultural production, and promote the transformation and upgrading of food industries.

According to the guideline, related departments should speed up building a legal system on food safety and enhance its enforcement, to strictly crack down on illegal activities such as producing or selling counterfeit goods.

It also urged that domestic food safety standards should be aligned with international ones, especially on key products and indicators such as heavy metal and organic pollutants, infant formulas and food for medical use.

Further legislation on soil pollution and enhanced quality standards for soil environment are underlined in the action plan for the prevention of air, water and soil pollution.

To guarantee quality and safety in agricultural products, the guideline required related industries to implement agricultural standardization and promote the production of superior quality, safe and organic food products.

In addition, to control food safety risks, related departments should strengthen regional and departmental safety supervision through internet and big data, crack down on any illegal activities that pose a threat to food safety while establishing a comprehensive and powerful supervision system at the grassroots level.