Chinese farm products are getting safer, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Tuesday in a regular press conference, citing recent tests of vegetables and meat in major cities that showed more than 95 percent of products were up to standard.

 

The ministry sent teams to more than 30 cities during January to check chemical residues in vegetables and meat and contaminants in seafood.

 

About 95.4 percent of tested vegetables met the standards, 0.1 percentage point higher than at the end of last year and 2.6 percentage points higher than a year earlier, said the ministry.

 

Pork and chicken samples were found free of any drug residues in 21 cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Changsha, it said.

 

All the seafood that was tested was up to scratch when it came to chloramphenicol (an anti-microbial agent) contamination.

 

Tests for Malachite green, a cancer-causing chemical formerly used by fish farmers to kill parasites, found that 91.5 percent of food passed inspection, two percentage points higher than a year earlier, it said.

 

The proportion of seafood free of nitrofurans, an antibiotic that has been linked to cancer, was 5.5 percentage points higher than a year earlier, at 92.3 percent, it said.

 

The ministry has ordered local branches to tighten quality checks and push for standardization in the farm sector while helping farmers in snow disaster regions resume production.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 6, 2008)