China to review food safety draft law

China is set to review a draft law on food safety on Thursday, a day after the UN urged the country to enact stricter laws and replace its patchwork surveillance system to help restore public trust badly shaken by a spate of food safety scandals. The country's legislature, the National People's Congress, was scheduled to discuss a number of proposed laws, including a food safety law, in a meeting beginning Thursday afternoon and concluding on Tuesday. The meeting comes after the U.N. released a 30-page report saying China could boost public trust in its food safety standards by including more funding and training for food inspectors. "The national system needs urgent review and revision," UN Resident Coordinator in China Khalid Malik said during on Wednesday press conference in Beijing where the paper was made public. Most critically, China needs a unified regulatory agency, the report said, and a place consumers can go for reliable information. The task is now split between a half dozen government agencies, creating confusion and uneven enforcement. "The maintenance of the public confidence in the food they eat is likely to be best achieved if there were within government a single source of information on food safety and related matters," the U.N. paper said. China has been trying to restore consumer confidence after authorities announced in September they had found the industrial chemical melamine, which is used to make plastics and fertilizer, in infant formula. The tainted milk powder has sickened more than 50,000 babies and been blamed for the deaths of four infants.

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