Call for stricter rules on take-away food

Take-away restaurants don’t have ‘to request health licenses and permits and receive a regular supervision,’ lawmaker Kwan Tsui Hang warned

Take-away restaurants are very popular in Macau but they are currently out of the food safety regulation system, Kwan Tsui Hang warned. In an enquiry, the lawmaker asked the government to impose stricter rules on these shops.
“There are currently a large number of take-away food shops which provide residents with a variety of choices and attract a lot of consumers,” the Macau Federation of Trade Unions vice-president wrote.
But, unlike conventional restaurants, these take-away shops “need only to apply to the Financial Services Bureau for a registration certificate” in order to start operating, she stressed.
“There is no need to request health licenses and permits and receive a regular supervision,” Kwan wrote. As a result “it’s difficult to monitor food safety and sanitation” in these shops.
In a reply to another enquiry sent by the lawmaker in 2009, the director of the Health Bureau, Lei Chin Ion, said inspectors would regularly visit take-away food shops and follow up on complaints.
But Kwan asked for more information on these inspections and questioned whether “this mechanism can ensure that the food supply is in line with the relevant health and safety requirements”.
A new law on food safety slated to come into effect this year will make the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) solely responsible for overseeing all food products and establishments in Macau.
The final round of public consultation ended last month but Kwan is disappointed that the issue of take-away food shops has not been “clearly” settled. The lawmaker asked the government whether or not the new food safety regulatory system would cover these shops.

Waiting for law

Last October the director of the Legal Affairs Bureau, André Cheong Weng Chon, said he expected to wrap up the draft law at the beginning of 2012 and submit it to the Legislative Assembly’s approval.
According to the government’s legislative plan the food safety bill should be sent to lawmakers during the first half of this year but Kwan doubts the document will be ready in time.
“To strengthen food safety supervision is the general consensus of the Macau society,” she acknowledged. But the veteran activist stressed that the public consultation didn’t go into “the specific provisions” of future system.
Meanwhile the Food Safety Centre, which was first announced in the 2008 Policy Address, is still waiting for this law to be approved in order to begin its operations. IACM has already recruited 16 professionals in several areas, including medicine, public health and veterinary medicine, to work in this new centre.
A survey conducted last August by Macau Federation of Trade Unions (FAOM) found that over 94 percent of respondents were worried about food safety in the territory, after several scandals.
That same month, an alleged case of food poisoning at one of Galaxy Macau’s buffet restaurants sent 27 people to the hospital.
In Macau in 2011 several Taiwanese-made raw materials and food products were recalled due to contamination by toxic plasticisers, adding to concerns over imported Japanese foodstuffs after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.