Beijing to set up 500 monitoring stations for food and drug safety

The city’s food and drug authority recently announced that it will set up 500 centers in residential communities to improve its monitoring of safety on food and drugs, according to a work conference held in Beijing on Jan 5.

Staff in these centers can use advanced testing devices, which can not only offer easy and fast examinations within the neighborhood, but also control the risk of any emergency.

By January, the authority had provided more than 1,100 sets of devices in a total of 322 communities at grassroots level.

Zhang Zhikuan, head of the authority, said that one of their priorities for this year is to release the responsible departments for different tasks in the supervision process. They will also take measures to increase the transparency in authorizing licenses, such as online applications.