China will extend its recently established meat and vegetable tracking system to include all cities of more than 1m people, by the end of 2015.
According to a report by government news agency Xinhua, the Ministry of Commerce made the announcement on Tuesday to extend the system amid concerns over food safety after a string of recent scandals.
The system, which was trialled in 10 cities last year, provides an information chain for the production, circulation and consumption of meat and vegetables within the country. China has begun trialling the system in an additional 10 cities this year.
A representative from the ministry’s market supervision department told the news agency the system currently monitors 176 slaughter houses, 100 wholesale markets, over 3,000 food markets, 1,400 supermarkets and more than 4,400 consuming groups.
The system will also benefit farmers as it can pin point the source of contaminated produce so inspections will only need to be carried out on the farms from where the produce was sourced.
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