From March 5 to 13, the second meeting of the 12th session of the National People's Congress was held, in which Wu Xiangdong, deputy to the National People's Congress, president of VATS Group and president of VATS Liquor, was present. He has been attaching great importance to food safety, and had submitted proposals and suggestions in the meeting closely related to the subject of this meeting. He proposed in the meeting to attach the top importance to food safety.

Suggestion 1: Pay extra attention to the food safety in rural areas

Wu Xiangdong, deputy to the National People's Congress, chairman of the group and president of VATS Liquor told the journalist on March 9, “It is needed to pay attention to food safety, especially food safety in rural areas. This is my first suggestion.” During the two sessions in 2013, Wu Xiangdong made also proposals in respect of food safety, including four proposals as “striving for eliminating blankness and defects of governmental regulation”, “establishing independent supervisory and law enforcement agency”, “establishing regular disclosure system of food safety supervision, monitoring and risk assessment results publicly on a regular basis”, and “taking multiple measures and actions to arouse the enthusiasm of enterprises, media and consumers in participating in supervision”. Wu Xiangdong said, food is the paramount necessity of the people. Therefore, food industry is the industry of the largest scale, moreover, food safety has long been an issue. In recent years, the public are decreasingly trusting food safety due to frequent incidents "on the tip of the tongue" such as tainted milk, swill-cooked dirty oil and fast grown chicken. And food safety issue was “demonized” which has brought not only troubles to consumers, but also adverse impact on the industry and enterprises.
As introduced by Wu Xiangdong, food safety has been improved to certain degree in major cities through the nation’s great efforts in renovation and centralized publicity. Citizens have remarkably raised their awareness and recognition of food safety. However, consumers in rural areas are still bearing weak awareness of food safety due to various limited conditions. Inferior drugs, bogus products, and bastard foods among other food safety problems that endanger the people’s physical and psychological health arose. In this context, greater efforts on food safety publicity must be made, severer punishment must be enforced in respect of food safety issue, and accountability mechanism and food safety supervision and management system must be established and improved.

Suggestion 2: Get tough with protective umbrellas for producing and selling counterfeit goods

As Wu Xiangdong suggested, “the Party Central Committee, NPC and the State Council should attach the highest importance to comprehensive treatment and management on food safety”, “implement ‘jurisdiction responsibility mechanism’ to food manufacturing and processing enterprises and small-scale workshops”, “enhance food safety laws revision”, “strengthen the supervision and regulation on environmental sources”, “increase capital input in food safety testing equipment and overall planning”… He, in particular, proposed to NPC to get tough with “protective umbrellas” for producing and selling counterfeit goods. Wu said, “I keep paying attention to this in the past several years”, and “I identified many strange phenomenon through observation of some cases. “Taking VATS Group as an example, over 2,000 cases relating to producing and selling counterfeit products that jeopardize food safety are registered every year, but only 200 out of them could be destroyed. Further down, only about 20 lawbreakers get punished by law. What’s worse, it is the case that if one person is arrested, soon some other persons will appeal for his/her mercy, and these persons appealing are really powerful! ‘Saving person with money’, and ‘using money to replace criminal penalty” are really a serve phenomenon.” Wu Xiangdong said, VATS Group has many famous wine brands enjoying active demand nationwide. The entire group has its own anti-counterfeit team composed of over 120 employees. However, huge money and labor force input deliver very limited effects. Wu Said, “On one occasion, we spent one year and found a counterfeiting shop, and public security organ arrested on the spot more than ten counterfeiting criminals. However, the person in charge of another law enforcing authority called in within half an hour after such arrest, begging for leniency.” In Wu’s opinion, in some places certain law enforcing authorities are playing games, i.e., arresting criminals but exculpating them latter, which is protecting, rather than striking those counterfeiting behaviors, and remains as the main reason for the increasingly food safety issue with anti-counterfeit efforts. Wu Xiangdong continued, “Such social phenomenon must be brought under permanent control, the field of food in particular. Food safety has close relation to people’s lives, and to the lasting social peace and stability. The nation must use extra efforts to severely strike the “protective umbrella” for lawbreakers.”

Suggestion 3: Food safety standard must be geared to international ones.

I strongly suggest that the National Health and Family Planning Commission revise and improve, as soon as possible, China’s food additives and heavy metal content standards to be geared to international ones.” Wu Xiangdong told the journalist that our standards applicable to food additives are suitable in 1950s and 1960s, instead of being applicable in modern days. Problems such as misuse of melamine and brown meat essence, and illegal application of food additives must be strictly govern. However, it is unpractical that food nowadays is produced without additives addition, and they are not completely prohibited even in Europe & America, Japan, and Singapore. Food additives addition remains as one of the symbols of the civilization and progress of human society. Food additives addition is allowable, but neither be misused, nor illegal. In China, no standards or criteria were established regarding food additives and heavy metal addition. Many quantized data are actually unreasonable. Wu said, “Non-uniform and unreasonable standards make people panic.” For example, UN enforces no restrictions on plasticizer application. However, the Mainland established relevant standards immediately after Taiwan did, which brought no reasons for the public to put trust in food industry. These standards were mostly likely temporary ones that had not been studied by competent authorities. This phenomenon attacked the confidence of the people in food industry, and meanwhile, destroyed the food industry and relevant industrial enterprises. Ultimately, the reason for this lies in the lack of uniform standards. Even we have, we failed to advance with the times.