In accordance with the work plan and priorities of food safety outlined by the General Office of the State Council, Ministry of Agriculture （MOA) developed and rolled out specific monitoring programs on agro-product quality & safety in 2013. Throughout the whole year, four routine monitoring programs were conducted nationwide, covering 153 large or middle sized cities and recording 87 parameters of 103 product items under 5 major categories. A total number of 38,984 samples were tested with an overall pass rate of 97.5%, 0.8 percentage point higher on a yearly basis. The pass rates of vegetables, tea, animal products and aquatic products reached 96.6%、98.1%、99.7% and 94.4% respectively, up by 0.6, 5.1, 0.1 and 3.9 percentage points on a yearly basis, while the pass rate of fruits was 96.8%, down by 0.3 percentage point over the previous year. The pass rate of agro-products in ractopamine tests was 99.7%, being equal to that of 2012. The above statistics suggested that China's agro-product quality & safety witnessed steady improvement in 2013.
In order to push forward the monitoring programs, MOA urged agricultural authorities at all levels to implement the decisions of the Central Rural Work Conference, take clearly-defined territorial responsibilities, regulate the use of pesticides and veterinary drugs in farming practices strictly,improve the efficiency of monitoring system and mechanism, and crack down on application of illegal substances, non-rational use of antibiotics and other violations, so as to enhance the administrative capacity in this regard. At the meantime, MOA launched routine monitoring programs of 2014 with an emphasis on the quality & safety of agro-products supplied during the Spring Festival and "Two Sessions" (National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference)periods, in order to detect and address major problems promptly and ensure agro-product consumption safety.