Today, when food safety has become a national topic, people hope to buy and eat truly safe, pollution-free, high-quality food. Organic food, green food, and pollution-free food ensure the safety of food raw materials from the food supply source and supply chain. However, in order for truly safe food to enter the homes of ordinary people, unremitting efforts from the society and the government are needed
The so-called food safety can be expressed as: the planting, breeding, processing, packaging, Storage, transportation, sales, consumption and other activities comply with national mandatory standards and requirements, and there are no toxic or harmful substances that may damage or threaten human health, cause consumers to become sick or die, or endanger consumers and their descendants. This concept shows that food safety includes both production safety and operation safety; both result safety and process safety; and both actual safety and future safety. There are mainly several types of safe food according to certification standards: organic food, green food, and pollution-free food. Today, eating safe, pollution-free, high-quality food has become the awareness and pursuit of many consumers. Organic food, green food, and pollution-free food have emerged as the times require.
Organic food refers to food that does not contain synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, growth regulators, ripening agents, and livestock and poultry feed additives. Green food refers to food that follows the principle of sustainable development, follows specific production methods, is recognized by a specialized agency, and is allowed to use the green food label trademark. It is divided into Grade A and Grade AA. Pollution-free food refers to food whose origin environment, production process and end products comply with pollution-free food standards and specifications, and has been recognized by a specialized agency and is allowed to use the pollution-free food label.
Organic food, green food, and pollution-free food all adopt pollution-free technology from planting, harvesting, processing, storage and transportation, and implement full quality control from land to table to ensure improve food safety. Safety is the outstanding safety feature of these three types of food, so let’s use the term “safe food” to generalize.
Organic food faces the crisis of "enclosure"
Chinese tea was once popular in Europe, but since 2000, the EU's inspection indicators for Chinese tea have increased from 50 to 60 to 120. , China's tea exports fell into a passive position due to excessive pesticide and chemical fertilizer residues. Even more worrying than the fate of tea is organic food. This kind of agricultural product, which does not contain pesticides or chemical fertilizers during its production and processing, and has unhindered international traffic, has long been targeted by "foreign powers". The organic food certification agencies of developed countries such as the United States and Japan have sneaked into China's domestic circles. "Virgin land", producing foreign brands of organic food. Since organic food certification has different brands in different countries, the more organic foods with foreign labels, the weaker the momentum of Chinese brand organic foods.
Domestic organic food production, including in Beijing, has just started. Currently, there are only more than 100 kinds of organic food, and the planting area of ??organic crops nationwide is only 1 million acres. Two-thirds of them are in the conversion period (organic agricultural products can only be produced three years after the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is completely stopped on the land). In Beijing, only one village in Daxing District has certified organic crop fields and produces a small number of organic agricultural products.
On April 1, the "Organic Product Certification Management Measures" issued by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine were officially implemented, and the accompanying "Organic Product Standards" and "Organic Product Certification Implementation Rules" also began to regulate the industry. development. "This is the first national unified standard specification for my country's organic food industry. It will fundamentally change the current situation of each certification agency citing its own or other countries' standards, thereby providing basic conditions for the unification and standardization of my country's organic certification work. Xiao Xingji, director of the Organic Food Development Center of the State Environmental Protection Administration, explained the significance of the implementation of the Measures.
It is understood that before this, although the principles of various standards (prohibition of the use of synthetic agricultural chemicals, prohibition of genetically modified technologies and organisms, conversion period, buffer zone, crop rotation, sales volume control, etc.) were basic Consistently, however, practical differences in the implementation of standards have led to standards confusion.
It is understood that the current market share of organic food in my country's total food market is less than 0.1, which is far lower than the world average of 2. In some developed countries, its market share has reached 5 to 10. The development of organic food in China has only Just getting started. However, based on the current development progress, experts predict that within 5 to 10 years, China's organic food production will increase by 5 to 10 times, and the production of a number of organic vegetables, grains, livestock, tea and other products that are closely related to public life will Prioritize development.
At the same time, we can see that my country's organic food exports have been increasing year by year. In 2003, they were approximately US$150 million, but their share in the international market has not yet reached 1%. In the world's organic food trade volume of more than 10 billion US dollars, China's share is a drop in the bucket. The main types of exports include soybeans, tea, vegetables, miscellaneous grains, etc. The main export targets are Japan, the United States and EU countries.
In order to improve the competitiveness of China's organic food, the State Environmental Protection Administration has issued a number of documents regulating organic agricultural production over the past year to increase supervision. Standardize organic food certification work at home and abroad. We strive to make our country’s organic food account for 1 to 2 of the international market share through 5 to 10 years of hard work. If this can be done, it can increase foreign exchange income by US$1 billion every year. At this stage, the production of organic food in our country is far from meeting the demand of foreign markets, and there is still a lot of room for development.
It is not easy to eat green and healthy food
As people pay more and more attention to their own health, "green food" is becoming more and more popular in the market. In major supermarkets, the price of the same variety of vegetables with a "green food" label is about twice as high as that of ordinary vegetables, and demand still exceeds supply.
Now, if you want to eat "green food", you only need to go to a large shopping mall or supermarket to buy it. I'm afraid it's not possible to go to the morning market or a small store.
Similarly, if you want to demand that all "imported" meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk, fruits and vegetables, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea be "green foods", it is currently difficult to do so.
Xiao Xinzhu, secretary-general of the Market Circulation Professional Committee of the China Green Food Association, told reporters that in recent years, with the full promotion of relevant departments and the strong pull of market demand, my country's "green food" has grown at an average annual rate of 30% to 40%. % rate increase (last year was 38%). However, compared with the huge market demand, "green food" is far from meeting people's needs in terms of variety and quantity.
"Green food" not only has huge market space, but also has good economic benefits. Why not produce more "green food"? However, it is not easy for an agricultural and sideline product to pass the certification of "green food". Not to mention that in order for an agricultural and sideline product to obtain the "identity" of "green food", it must go through strict procedures such as application, on-site inspection, product sampling, environmental monitoring, product testing, review and certification, and announcement. Strict standards mean that not every piece of land can meet the requirements. Due to high market thresholds, poor channels, and excessive overall costs in circulation, the further development of green food companies is affected or even restricted.
Tong Yadong from the Beijing Green Food Office said that "green food" has strict standards in terms of the environmental quality of the place of origin, production technology, products, packaging, storage and transportation, etc. These standards constitute a "From land to table" full quality control standard system. As long as one link does not meet the standard requirements, it cannot become a "green food".
Simply speaking of the environmental quality standards for the origin of "green food", it requires that agricultural primary products or the main raw materials of food must not have direct pollution from industrial enterprises in their growth areas, and that there must be no pollution sources in waters or upwinds. This area poses a pollution threat. The quality of the atmosphere, soil, irrigation water, and breeding water in this area must meet the strict requirements of green food for atmosphere, soil, and water quality. Moreover, for these many requirements, there must be a set of guarantee measures to ensure that the environmental quality of the area shall not decline during the production process within the validity period of the certification.
These standards may seem a bit harsh to ordinary people.
Today, with the rapid economic development, economically developed areas, especially around big cities like Beijing, need to find a place where the air quality reaches excellent standards, the irrigation water is pollution-free, and there are no pollution sources such as sewage companies and landfills upwind. Land is easier said than done, and it is even harder to ensure that environmental quality does not decline.
Show quality to the market
It should be said that "food safety" has now become the thing that people are most concerned about. Not long ago, among the "Top Ten News Keywords of 2004" voted by netizens on a certain website, the word "food safety" topped the list. From this point of view, the market prospects for pollution-free agricultural products should be promising. However, in some places we have seen the opposite of what we expected - sales of pollution-free agricultural products are not booming. What’s the problem? Taking into account the situation in various places, there are no more than two reasons: First, price. Due to the higher cost, the price of pollution-free vegetables is about 20 higher than that of ordinary vegetables, which naturally discourages the working class. But at the same time, people also see another situation. Whenever an agricultural product trade fair is held in the city, there are always many citizens coming to buy products, and most of them are elderly people who live on a budget. Agricultural products are expensive at the exhibition. However, people’s enthusiasm for consumption is still very high because of green food. Why don't they find it expensive now? We heard a voice saying: "This is a trade fair held by the state. The products at the fair are all authentic green foods. We can buy them with confidence!"
It can be seen that price is not an absolute threshold. The key is whether people can buy something worth their money after paying a high price. This involves the second reason - quality. Quality refers to the quality of the product itself. For ordinary consumers, they only know that pollution-free agricultural products do not use highly toxic pesticides and do not contain toxic additives. However, in the face of the so-called "pollution-free products" that can be seen everywhere on the market, consumers also have doubts in their minds. Since these dishes can be If you take it to the market and sell it in such large quantities, it should be safe to a certain extent, but it’s just not as safe as real pollution-free vegetables! In addition, quality also involves a reliability issue. Nowadays, in order to make huge profits, some unscrupulous traders put pollution-free labels on all products. In one place, there was an incident of pollution-free vegetable chain stores buying "fake vegetables", which even caused consumers to "give up" the real ones when consuming. Pollution-free agricultural products that are difficult to distinguish from fake.
Studying consumers’ consumption psychology, we can easily see several problems: too few certified bases cannot carry out large-scale production to reduce costs, which affects consumers’ purchasing power; the market access system is not If it is not in place, a large number of uninspected vegetables enter the market, and consumers do not have the ability to distinguish; terminal detection is not in place, and there is no transparent safety information, which reduces consumers' purchasing confidence. To sum up the three points, it turns out that the relevant departments still do not strictly control the sales terminals.
To improve the market competitiveness of pollution-free agricultural products, we must grasp the source and strengthen consumer guidance, but the most fundamental thing is to control the market sales. For consumers, they don’t care what you say or advocate, they only care about what you do. Since ordinary vegetables can be sold in the most conspicuous places of some large supermarkets, and there is no definite evidence to prove that there are any problems with them, they will still choose the cheaper ones; you can only keep harmful products out of the market and use the most intuitive Testing methods tell consumers that all the food sold on the market is safe, and they will buy from you. This is the most common truth!
How far is the spring of safe food from us? How to ensure safety at the source and supply chain of food requires unremitting efforts from the government, industry associations, enterprises and all aspects of society.