Ningbo is weaving a web of administrative system for food safety. The other day, the source tracing system of meats and vegetables of Ningbo was completed and put into operation. Of all the pilot cities for this program, Ningbo's food supervising system is more comprehensive, with widest coverage.

"At the checking terminal, stamp your invoice, and you get all information of the pork you have bought: the source of the pork and butcher and the peddler," said a customer at a market in Panhuo. With this source tracing system the quality of pork is ensured.

After the frequent food safety incidents in the country, the food safety is one of the greatest concerns of Ningbo Municipal Party Committee and Ningbo Municipal Government. Shi Xiaohua, Director of Ningbo Municipal Office of Food Safety, said that based on the reality that 75% of the food comes from other cities, from 2007, Ningbo took the lead in China to build a system to trace the sources of food.

Today, this system can trace the sources of the 10 kinds of food that concerns people's livelihood: pork, vegetables, bean products, oil, milk, beef, chickens, eggs and rice and all information of the place of production, supplier, variety, transport, and sales.

After the "lean-meat pork" incidents, Ningbo Municipal Office of Food Safety lost no time to have a thorough check of the port on the market of Ningbo and released the information to the public, to the relief of the citizens.

Following the guideline that the key to food safety is prevention, Ningbo persistently strengthens checks and tries to establish the pre-warning mechanism. In 2009, the city completed the establishment of China's first information co-sharing system for urban food tests and checks, a system that integrates information from all related administrative departments and labs.

"A cabbage will pass through 170 tests," said Rao Yunfeng, a vegetable wholesale dealer from Quzhou. "Any problem found with our vegetables, we'll be on the blacklist. That is the top prohibition that we never dare to touch."

At present, the system has information of over 1.4 million tests of about 140,000 samples. Ningbo regularly informs the citizens of risks of food and it is the first city in China that releases regular reports of food safety.

According to Report of Food Safety of Ningbo 2010, in 2010 Ningbo made laboratory tests of 45,000 samples, getting over 520,000 data. The pass rate is respectively 89.70% and 98.87% and the assurance rate of the food safety of the public is 92%.

With the gradually improved scientific, standardized and effective supervision mechanism, in recent five years Ningbo had not a single big incident in food safety. Early this month, the practice of Ningbo was elected as one of the top ten cases of China of innovated systems for food safety. "The experience of Ningbo is a very good example for other cities of China," said Hou Peisen, Secretary of Party Leadership Group of the State Food Safety Assessment Center.