It also aims to set rules for different sectors of food industry, in bid to restore faith in products
BEIJING: China will publish a blacklist of food additives that make products taste better or appear nutritious, but are damaging to health, state media said. This comes as the country struggles to restore faith in the 'made in China' brand.
'The Ministry of Health is working with related departments on the blacklist that would be updated constantly,' Mr Su Zhi, the ministry's deputy director of the health supervision bureau, was quoted as saying by China Daily.
Common additives
THESE additives commonly found in Chinese supermarkets would be among the first to be tested for consumption fitness by the Ministry of Health:
'We will conduct stricter tests on blacklisted substances while checking food production lines,' he said on a China Central Television programme on Thursday.
The government also aims to set specific rules for different sectors of the food industry, starting with dairy products, and then go on to modify them for unified food safety standards after China's draft food safety law is passed, China Daily reported.
China now has several different standards for food additives, the paper said, but they are not necessarily consistent with one another across the country.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last month that the recent milk scandal would spur the introduction of China's first major food safety law, which is currently being reviewed.
The measure is expected to impose safety standards on food additives, ban all harmful chemicals, and allow the government to recall unsafe food if companies fail to do so.
Awareness of the widespread use of food additives has increased in the wake of the milk scandal, which killed at least six infants and made close to 300,000 children sick.
After that scare in which milk was found to contain excessive quantities of the industrial chemical melamine, Chinese officials have been working to restore public confidence in its food chain, hoping to prevent a similar incident.
A front-page article last week in China's Southern Weekend newspaper questioned whether the addition of bleaching agents to flour was healthy. According to the weekly Oriental Outlook, the country is inundated with additives, with more than 2,300 kinds available in the market.
'We in China can't live without additives anywhere we go,' Mr Zhang Lisheng, the research manager of a Beijing-
based food additive company, told the weekly. 'It is no exaggeration that an average Chinese takes in up to 100 varieties of additives a day.' He cited a loaf of bread, which could take up to 100 kinds of additives to produce.
Additives are used for different purposes in China. Melamine, used in the manufacture of plastics and pesticides, was added to watered-down milk because it mimics protein in quality tests. It has also turned up in many exports, leading to the removal from shelves around the world of Chinese dairy products and food made with Chinese milk.
The milk scare followed many similar incidents, such as the discovery of toxins in Chinese dumplings in Japan and fish from the mainland in Hong Kong.
Health officials in China's north-east Jilin province are investigating the source of a fourth batch of eggs found with melamine in tests conducted by a Hong Kong laboratory, state media reported.
And the European Union (EU) said on Wednesday that it had banned imports of Chinese soya-based food products for infants and young children after melamine was found in Chinese soya bean meal. All Chinese consignments of baking powder, or ammonium bicarbonate, would be tested at EU points of entry after high levels of melamine were found, it added.
