Source: Southern Metropolis Daily 2014-03-02 Page A08
Written by: Liu Jun, Yan Hua
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Liu Xin, Member of the CPPCC National Committee and Director of Academe of Food and Health Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, makes a proposal to establish a national big data platform to monitor food safety risk, so that food safety issues can be predicated beforehand and traced afterwards, and environmental treatment can be involved in advance.

According to Liu Xin, food safety involves every step from the field to the table, and needs dynamic monitoring to cover the whole process. Various kinds of food inspection institutions in China, including the national, local, universities, research institutes, enterprises and the third party inspection institutions, frequently conduct inspections and tests on food safety and produce vast data. However, these institutions are independent from each other and do not share their data, causing a wast of resources. The state should make relevant regulations to require various food inspection institutions to report the vast data of these “information islands” to the national big data platform of food safety risk monitoring, provide policy support for food safety supervision and early warning analysis, and enable researchers, government supervision institutions and the consumers to make inquiries and use.