China has witnessed a notable decline in outbreaks of foodborne diseases, signaling positive progress on food-safety management, according to the country’s National Health Commission (NHC).
The achievement is attributed to the implementation of a national food-safety risk-monitoring program, Cao Xuetao, deputy head of the NHC, said on Tuesday.
Foodborne diseases, commonly known as food poisoning, represent a critical global public health concern.
In recent years, the NHC has introduced three major monitoring systems to improve awareness of food-safety risks. These systems focus on monitoring individual cases of foodborne diseases, tracking outbreaks of such diseases, and establishing a molecular traceability network to identify the sources of foodborne illnesses.
China’s food safety governance has made positive progress with a decrease of 11 percent in the number of foodborne disease outbreaks and a 33.9 percent reduction in the number of related deaths since the beginning of the period covered by the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), officials from the National Health Commission (NHC) revealed at an event in Beijing on Tuesday during Food Safety Awareness Week.
Li said that according to the foodborne disease monitoring network, from 2010 to 2022, a total of 46,430 foodborne disease outbreaks were reported nationwide (an average of 3,572 per year, among which 1,024 cases were due to mushroom poisoning), with 330,870 cases of illness (an average of 25,452 per year) and 1,679 deaths (an average of 129 per year, among which 70 were caused by mushroom poisoning).
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