Diners help clean kitchens

As a destination famed for the excellence of its cuisine, it comes as no surprise that citizens have got behind a campaign to raise food safety standards.

City food and drug authorities coughed up more than 770,000 yuan (US$112,000) last year in rewards for tip-offs about poor hygiene, spoiled food and unlicensed restaurants, a slight increase on 2016, a report revealed yesterday.

Restaurants accounted for over 40 percent of all tip-offs, followed by meat products, according to a quality report released by the Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau.

Discomfort after dining, poor hygiene, rotten food, unlicensed premises and smoking were the main complaints leading to tip-offs about restaurants. There were 1,037 such cases.

In addition, 59,000 products were recalled last year, after failing quality tests.

City authorities stopped 120,000 batches of substandard products entering the country last year, with a value of more than US$10 billion. Lack of Chinese labels, substandard packaging, pests and poor quality were the major problems.