564 food makers lose licenses over safety

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said more than half the companies failed to reapply after moving, reorganizing or letting their old licenses expire, according to a statement posted on the agency’s Web site Tuesday. Three companies lost licenses for illegal behavior, the statement said, without giving more details.

The agency is tightening licensing and health enforcement for food makers and shutting smaller, substandard producers amid domestic and overseas pressure to improve food safety. Beijing last month ordered a four-month campaign to weed out defective goods and repair the damage to the “Made in China” brand.

“China has been working on the safety issue for a long time,” said Anne Tse, a Hong Kong-based associate principal at McKinsey & Co., the management consultant. “These steps are essential and will be continuous because the government wants to save the reputation of Chinese exports.”

Export quality was called into question this year by a U.S. ban on some Chinese seafood, recalls of lead-painted toys and U.S. pet deaths linked to a China-made ingredient. In the most recent reported domestic incident, 307 children fell sick after eating contaminated pork at school, Xinhua News Agency reported.

China has emphasized increased inspection and license scrutiny as it moves to close gaps in its fragmented production and regulatory system. The government will step up food and drug safety checks at major tourist spots during the October week-long national holiday, according to Xinhua.

China has about 448,000 food-processing companies, 79 percent with fewer than 10 employees, according to the quality administration. The agency aims to cut the number of small food makers by half by 2010 to reduce shoddy or counterfeit products.

The deputy head of the quality and safety administration, Wei Chuan, last week called on the U.S. to help China by increasing spot checks on imports without proper Chinese hygiene and export inspection certificates. And the agency on Sept. 11 announced that it investigated 32,800 cases of unsafe food in the first 19 days of the quality campaign.

The State Administration of Industry and Commerce on Sept. 18 outlined plans to require wholesalers and retailers to demand invoices and business certificates from suppliers to cut out unlicensed companies and create a paper trail in case of quality problems.

China has 4.69 million food operators, including 345,800 companies and 2.54 million self-employed individuals involved in distribution, wholesale or retailing, according to the commerce administration’s statistics.

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