Gao Hongbin, Vice Minister of Agriculture of China, noted during his visit to Shandong that China should strive to effectively implement the prevention and control measures to ensure safe consumption of animal products.

On 11 to 14 January, Mr Gao led a group of people to Shangdong Province on an inspection tour of the prevention and control of winter animal diseases as well as the monitoring and management over the quality and safety of animal products.

Vice Minister Gao emphasised that the country should strengthen our efforts in the following three aspects to approach the difficult task of preventing and controlling animal diseases in the crucial season when they happened frequently.

• First, strengthen supervision and control measures. He said: "We should effectively intensify comprehensive epidemic control efforts in farms to bring biological safety to a new height, and vigorously strengthen hygiene supervision and law enforcement, especially over key links and regions (suburbs linking urban and rural areas as well as surrounding counties and districts in particular). We should make greater efforts to crack down on such illegal activities as slaughtering, processing, smuggling and selling of animals that die of diseases as well as their products to prevent them from flowing to the market."
  
  
• Second, thoroughly organize prevention and control work. Mr Gao said: "We should diligently intensify our efforts in the work concerning fundamental immunity, disease monitoring and epidemiological study. We should strictly follow the requirements for reports on epidemic diseases and implement the reporting and examination system. For those who refuse to report epidemics or provide concealed, false, delayed, or incomplete reports, liability shall be pursued in accordance with the law."
  
  
• Third, effectively tighten emergency efforts. "We should strengthen the emergency prevention and control mechanism, regulate emergency procedures, improve the capacity of reserve teams and increase material reserves. Meanwhile, we should be well prepared for the outbreak of epidemics and strictly implement the system of appointing someone to be on duty day and night and officials as superintendents. In case of emergencies, we should respond promptly with timely reports so as to take effective measures for rapid control and extermination of epidemics and to prevent their spreading," added Vice Minister Gao.