China vows to expand food safety surveillance network

    The State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) set out a series of goals recently to overhaul its food and drug safety market during the next five years, according to Monday's People's Daily.

    In addition to strengthening its supervision system, the SFDA has vowed to establish evaluation systems for medicines and medical apparatus, and carry out the evaluation of Chinese traditional medicines, the paper said.

    In the first 11 months of 2005, China handled 258,700 medicine-related cases which involved 430 million yuan (around 53.75 million U.S. dollars) in value.

    In the same period, China banned 114,00 unlicensed manufacturers, demolished 461 illegal manufacturing factories, withdrew 66 operation licenses, and imposed criminal penalties on 34 people, sources with the SFDA said this January.

    The SFDA will improve check-ups and supervision over the quality of medicines sold in the countryside this year, targeting the medicines that have provoked complaints promoted by illegal advertising or low-quality.