City keeps track of imported cold-chain food

A total of 548 cold-chain food production and commerce companies in Shanghai were included in a food tracking system by the end of last year to curb the spread of COVID-19, according to the city’s annual food safety report.

Among the companies, 300 are meat and seafood producers, 121 are food storage and transportation service providers and 127 are dealers in imported food. In total, they uploaded about 4.6 million pieces of data to the system.

Also, by the end of last year, local authorities had tested more than 116,000 samples from imported cold-chain food stored in 87 cold storage service providers.

So far, 95,695 people, or 99.6 percent, of people working in the imported cold-chain food industry in Shanghai have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

In an intensified crackdown on the illegal wild animal trade after the outbreak of the pandemic, local authorities ordered the closure of 16,700 shops and removed 1.02 million pieces of product information on online shopping platforms based in Shanghai by the end of last year. Almost all of the illegal products were sold from other parts of the country, the report said.

More complaints

The city’s market inspection hotline 12315 received 102,049 complaints related to food issues in 2020, a 42 percent rise from 2019, according to the report.

Most of the complaints were related to meat products, followed by restaurant food, bakery food, fruit and milk products.

The complaints included those about food quality, price and coupon disputes, food delivery disputes, packaging irregularities, license problems and illegal smoking in restaurants.

Mass food poisoning cases Shanghai remain at a low level, with three cases reported in 2020 in which 62 people were affected. Two cases took place in company canteens, and the third due to no license in food processing, according to the report.

No major food safety incident was reported.

A total of 491 suspects were caught by Shanghai police in 491 criminal cases regarding food safety last year with 88 accused and 19 sentenced in the first instance, the report said.