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Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230

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Food Control

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Assessing the establishment of agro-food control systems based on a relevantofficials’ survey in China

Lijie Yang, Yongzhong Qian, Chen Chen, Fang Wang*

Institute of Quality Standards & Testing Technology for Agro-Products, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 29 June 2011Received in revised form23 January 2012Accepted 24 January 2012

Keywords:Agro-foodQuality and safetyFood control systemChina

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 10 82106552; faxE-mail addresses: wangfang1125@126.com,

(F. Wang).

0956-7135/$ e see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.foodcont.2012.01.048

a b s t r a c t

With agro-food safety events happening frequently, China is taking measures to build agro-food controlsystems that include establishing an organization and agencies, enacting laws, allocating funds and so on.To assess the establishment of agro-food control systems, an electronic survey was sent to local agro-foodcontrol officials in 22 provinces of China. With descriptive analysis and factor analysis of 214 respon-dents, we determined an objective view of the establishment of municipal agro-food control systems inChina. The study shows that there are great challenges to establishing these systems. Although localgovernments paid high attention to agro-food control by measures such as signing responsibilitycontracts and bringing the indicators of performance of agro-food control into the local governmentperformance evaluation system, local laws and regulations relevant to agro-food safety were rarelyenacted, Agro-food Safety Public Services were scarcely established in townships, and multi-sectoralmanagement caused inefficiency. Moreover, 89.08% of the respondents indicated that the fundsprovided by local governments were not enough for agro-food control, which was also considered thebiggest problem. It is apparent that there are great regional differences in the establishment of agro-foodcontrol systems.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Food is a basic need; it is government’s responsibility to ensurethat this need is met (FAO, 2002). Food safety is not only crucial topublic health but also a very social problem. According to the newcomprehensive estimates of foodborne illnesses from the Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 48 millionpeople (1 in 6 Americans) get sick, and 3000 die each year fromfoodborne illnesses in the United States (CDC, 2010). In 2008,according to a report in South China Morning Post Greater ChinaOutlook, more than 290,000 infants suffered from an impededurinary tract due to melamine (SCMP.com, 2008). The hazardsassociated with foods prompt governments to intervene in the foodchain by establishing national food control systems (Neeliah &Goburdhun, 2007).

However, food control generally had a relatively low priority andconsisted of numerous small components with limited coordina-tion (Varzakas, Tsigarida, Apostolopoulos, Kalogridou-Vassiliadou,& Jukes, 2006), such as administration, quality assurance systems,

: þ86 10 82106551.yanglijie19860103@163.com

All rights reserved.

personnel, funds and so on. In developing countries, especially inChina, the importance of the establishment of food control systemsis just being recognized by the governments, but the elements ofthe food control systems are badly lacking. Therefore, the estab-lishment of food control systems inevitably becomes a long-termprocess.

Agro-food consumption accounts for more than 70% of the totalfood consumption in China, while highly processed foodconsumption accounts for less than 30%. In the past 10 years, morethan 30 of approximately 50 exposed food safety events in Chinawere agro-food safety events. Therefore, people are greatly con-cerned about agro-food safety issues. Presently, a series of agro-food scares (dioxin, melamine and malachite green) have seri-ously undermined Chinese public confidence in agro-food safety. Inaddition, China’s food exports suffered significantly because Chinacannot always meet international food safety standards (Jin, Zhou,& Ye, 2008). This issue was exposed at the 104th China ExportCommodities Fair in 2008 with an approximately 30% decline infood export turnover after the melamine event (Huang, 2009). Toreduce the loss, the Chinese government has established numerousmeasures to tighten up agro-food control.

In China, the people’s governments are established at central,provincial, municipal, county and township levels. Agro-foodcontrol is mainly under the jurisdiction of the administrative

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230224

departments for agriculture under the people’s governments at orabove the county level. The agro-food control work of the admin-istrative departments for agriculture is arranged by the people’sgovernments, but these local governments could get some tech-nical or methodological guidance from the administrative depart-ments for agriculture at higher or central levels.

In 2006, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Quality andSafety of Agricultural Products (SCNPC, 2006) regulated thegovernments’ responsibilities for the quality and safety control ofagricultural products, the actions of agricultural product operatorsand the requirements for supervisory departments. In the sameyear, the MOA (Ministry of Agriculture) Regulation 67/2006 on thelabeling of livestock and poultry and record files of breeding,Regulation 70/2006 on the packaging and labeling of agriculturalproducts and Regulation 71/2006 on the production place of agri-cultural products stipulated some specific requirements in threeaspects according to the Law of the PRC on Quality and Safety ofAgricultural Products. In 2009, the Food Safety Law of the People’sRepublic of China (SCNPC, 2009) regulated the formulation ofquality and safety standards for agro-food in chapter three and therelease of safety information about agro-food in chapter seven.Because the laws and regulations on food and agricultural productsdefine the aims and not the specific means, the different controlofficials may apply the statutes differently (Tähkäpää, Kallioniemi,Korkeala, & Maijala, 2009). Furthermore, each article of the lawconfronts different challenges due to the different cultures,economics and environments among the regions, and the day-to-day changes encountered in the regions. With the laws on foodand agricultural products being enforced, agencies, policies andsome specific works of agro-food control systems are being set upthroughout the whole country to maintain a high agro-food safetylevel, to achieve consistent procedures throughout China, and tofacilitate trade among and between regions. It is necessary toexplore how each aspect of the systems was established, whichparts were of most concern to officials and whether there areregional differences in establishing agro-food control systems. Thisinformation is essential for evaluating the impact and effectivenessof new regulations and measures of the systems, for ensuring equaltreatment and for prohibiting the possible unfair competition ofagro-food operators or local authorities among the different areas(Tähkäpää et al., 2009).

This studywas conducted due to the current, significant changesboth in the legislation and structures of the agro-food controlsystems. The study aimed to identify the difficulties and problemsthat hindered the establishment of these systems. Overcomingthese difficulties and solving these problems will help to improvethe agro-food safety level.

2 The districts of municipalities directly under the Central Government have thesame administrative levels as normal municipalities in China.

3 According to the China Statistic Yearbook (2009), China consists of foureconomic areas: Eastern China, Central China, Northeastern China and WesternChina. Eastern China includes the provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong,

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Survey

A cross-sectional study, conducted in 17 provinces, 4 autono-mous regions and 2 municipalities directly under the CentralGovernment of China1 fromMarch 2009 to April 2010, surveyed theestablishment of agro-food control systems at all levels. In thispaper, only the municipal data were analyzed.

The survey group was composed of officials and researchersfrom the NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission),the Ministry of Agriculture and the Research Center of Quality

1 Municipalities directly under the Central Government are different fromgeneral municipalities. They have the same administrative level as provinces andautonomous regions in China.

Standard for Agro-Produce. The first step was to investigate theagro-food control system in Shandong province. The resultcontributed to the design of the questionnaire. Next, agro-foodcontrol officials in Jiangsu (province, municipalities and counties)were selected for the pretest. Third, based on the useful feed-backinformation from the pretest, the questionnaire was revised.Finally, we collected the first-hand data through electronic ques-tionnaires answered by agro-food control officials in administrativedepartments for agriculture at and above the county level.

2.2. Questionnaire

The questionnaire about the establishment of agro-food controlsystems consisted of 33 questions, which were organized into foursections: agricultural development, groups and agencies in thesystems, relevant policies to improve agro-food quality and safetyand specific work in agro-food control. Of the 33 total questions, 23questions in the later 3 sections were selected as original evaluatingindicators.

The Bureau for Agricultural Food Quality and Safety under theMinistry of Agriculture informed provincial Departments of Agri-culture of our survey on agro-food quality and safety in September2009. In the notice, the administrative departments for agricultureunder the people’s government at provincial, municipal and countylevels were required to download electronic questionnaires fromthe website of China Agricultural Quality Standards and answer thequestions. The provincial Departments of Agriculture collected allthe questionnaires and sent them to the Bureau for AgriculturalFood Quality and Safety.

In total, 313 electronic questionnaires were required to beanswered by the municipal administrative departments for agri-culture, and 253 were submitted, of which 214 were found to beusable. The 214 study respondents consisted of officials from 202 of340 cities and 12 of 74 districts,2 who were in charge of agriculturalproduct quality and safety supervision. Fig. 1 illustrates the numberof valid questionnaires received from each province and thenumber of municipalities under the control of each province. Theregional distribution percentage of the responses from all themunicipalities situated in each region3 was as follows: EasternChina 50.0%, Central China 59.0%, Northeastern China 52.8% andWestern China 49.0%. The 214 respondents represented more thanhalf of all municipalities in China.

2.3. Statistical analyses

The questionnaire responses were analyzed using MicrosoftExcel 2003 software (Microsoft Corporation; Redmond, WA, USA)and the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 18.0 for Windows(SPSS Inc.; Chicago, IL, USA). Means with standard deviations (SDs),frequencies and percentages of the responses in each category werecalculated. Factor analysis was performed to comprehensivelyassess the establishment and ranking of municipal agro-foodcontrol systems. Regional differences were calculated based onthe regional response rate and total scores.

Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan; Central China includesthe provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi; NortheasternChina includes the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang; Western Chinaincludes the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xin-jiang, Xizang, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi.

Fig. 1. Valid questionnaires received from 21 provinces and 2 municipalities directly under the central government of China.

Table 1Groups and agencies in agro-food control systems.

Questions Answers Subject(no.)

Percent(%)

Is an agro-food safety leadership groupestablished?

Yes 177 83.5No 35 16.5

Is a specialized agro-food quality andsafety supervision authority established?

Yes 145 68.4No 67 31.6

Is a department for agricultural lawenforcement established?

Yes 109 51.4No 103 48.6

Is an Agro-food Safety Public Serviceestablished in the townships?

Yes 30 14.6No 175 85.4

How many testing agencies areestablished under the government?(number)

Lessthan 10

166 84.7

10e19 26 13.320e29 2 1.0Morethan 29

2 1.0

And how many of the testing agenciesobtained the CMA? (number)

0e2 145 88.43e4 13 7.95e6 3 1.87e8 3 1.8

How many agro-food wholesale marketsestablished testing departments?(number)

0e4 123 78.95e9 19 12.210e14 11 7.015e19 1 0.6Morethan 19

2 1.3

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230 225

In factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure ofsampling adequacy was adopted to examine the partial correlationamong and between the variables, whose value was set at >0.70.Bartlett’s test of sphericity was used to examine whether thecorrelation matrix was a unit matrix, and the statistical significancewas set at <0.05. The total scores are calculated by the model:

F ¼ b1*F1 þ b2*F2.þ bi*Fi ði ¼ 1;2.kÞwhere k is the number of selected principal factors. If the selectedprincipal factors could cumulatively account for 85% of the totalvariance, it indicated that these factors contained nearly the entiremessageof all theoriginal indicators. Fi (i¼1, 2. k) are factor scores.Factor scores are evaluated in a scaled form inwhich each variable istransformed into a set of standardized and dimensionless variables(zero mean and standard deviation equal to one), and then, takingthe score coefficients of all the new variables in the correspondingfactor as weights, the weighted sums of the new set of variables arecalculated to obtain the factor scores. The factor score coefficientsare estimated by a regression method. The principal factors areextracted by principal component analysis. bi (i ¼ 1, 2 . k) repre-sents theproportions of eigenvalues of the correlationmatrix,whichare variance proportions. The factor scores are multiplied with bi asthe weights of the corresponding principal factors and added toobtain the total scores of the samples (Zhang, 2006).

3. Results

3.1. Groups and agencies

Table 1 shows the groups and agencies set up in the agro-foodcontrol systems, which indicated how the systems had taken

shape initially. Most of the municipalities (83.5%) had agro-foodsafety leadership groups that could coordinate all agro-foodquality and safety supervision departments and arrange the impor-tant actions when an agro-food safety event happened (GeneralOffice of State Council, 2007). Although 68.4% of the municipalities

Table 2Relevant policies or measure to improve agro-food quality and safety.

Questions Answers Subject(no.)

Percent(%)

Does the government sign a responsibilitycontract with the supervision departmentand the governments at lower levels?

Yes 178 86.0No 29 14.0

Does the government bring the indicatorsof performance of agro-food control intothe government performance evaluationsystem?

Yes 178 85.6No 30 14.4

Does the supervision department sign anagro-food safety commitment with farmerproduction enterprises or specializedfarmer cooperatives?

Yes 119 57.8No 87 42.2

Does the government approve a budgetfor agro-food control?

Yes 119 57.2No 89 42.8

Are there any preferential policies orsubsidies for the certification of agro-foodincluded in the system?

Yes 104 54.2No 88 45.8

Do agro-food wholesale markets or farmerproduction enterprises enjoy any preferentialpolicies or subsidies for the establishmentof their testing departments?

Yes 49 27.4No 130 72.6

Are local laws and regulations relevant toagro-food safety enacted?

Yes 52 25.0No 156 75.0

5 The agro-food safety market access system mainly covers three areas: (1) Afood production licensing system will be implemented, (2) food production will besubject to mandatory inspection, and (3) food that has been inspected and found upto standard will be granted the “QS” label and given market access to assure

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230226

established specialized agro-food quality and safety supervisionauthorities, the average number of persons engaged in supervisionwas less than 8, and 82.2% of the respondents indicated that theplant, livestock and aquatic product safety management were scat-tered under different authorities. Meanwhile, 51.4% of the munici-palities established departments for agricultural law enforcement.

However, only 14.6% set up Agro-food Safety Public Services inthe townships, which are mainly responsible for the agro-foodsafety training of farmers, agro-food control technology exten-sion, routine inspections of agro-food production processes and theimplementation of agro-food control measures (MOA, 2011). Thisenquiry suggests that the grass-roots services received the lowestattention and that the establishment of Agro-food Safety PublicServices in the townships was the most common difficulty. Thenumbers of testing agencies under the governments varied from0 to 67, but in most municipalities (84.7%), the number was lessthan 10. Further, the number of testing agencies with the ChinaMetrological Accreditation (CMA) (AQSIQ, 2006) was mostly nomore than 2, and the testing departments contained in agro-foodwholesale market administrations were less. In 78.9% of themunicipalities, the number of testing departments was less than 4.Compared to that, the average number of all agro-food wholesalemarkets was 26.5, according to our survey. According to the Law ofthe PRC on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products, agro-foodwholesale markets are encouraged to establish a department fortesting agricultural product safety.

3.2. Policies and measures

Of all the municipalities, 85.6% brought the indicators ofperformance of agro-food control into local government perfor-mance evaluation systems,4 and 86% of the governments signedresponsibility contracts with agro-food quality and safety super-vision departments and the governments at lower levels. The twoabove-mentioned measures were the most common measurestaken by the governments to improve agro-food quality and safetycontrol. The implementation of these measures reflected thegovernments’ strong attention to food control. In addition, 57.2% ofthe investigated municipalities included the budget for agro-foodcontrol in the control systems, 54.2% included preferential poli-cies or subsidies for the certification of agro-food, and 57.8%required farmer production enterprises or specialized farmercooperatives to sign an agro-food safety commitment in which thelegal responsibilities of farmer production enterprises or special-ized farmer cooperatives were emphasized to raise their agro-foodsafety awareness.

Although governments attached importance to agro-food safety,some shortages in the establishment of an agro-food controlsystem existed. Only 25.0% of the municipalities enacted local lawsor regulations relevant to agro-food quality and safety, and only27.4% of the municipalities allowed agro-food wholesale markets orfarmer production enterprises to enjoy preferential policies orsubsidies for the establishment of their testing departments(Table 2). Therefore, two considerable challenges in the establish-ment of the control systemwere to formulate local legislations andpreferential policies or subsidies.

3.3. Specific work

Table 3 shows some specific work in agro-food control. Themostcommon supervision work was routine monitoring (93.3%),

4 In government performance evaluation systems, total scores could be calcu-lated through a statistical analysis of all evaluating indicators.

followed by a further quantitative analysis for agro-food that testedpositive for chemical residues (59.4%). Other supervision workincluded the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), the Hazard Analysisand Critical Control Point (HACCP) and the ISO series systemscertifications (53.7%) and traceability systems (50.3%). The biggestchallenge for the governments’ supervision work was to set up anagro-food safety market access system,5 which merely 37.5% of allthe municipalities established, whereas the system was firstintroduced for wheat flour, rice, edible vegetable oil, soy sauce andvinegar by the General Administration of Quality Supervision,Inspection and Quarantine in early 2002 (AQSIQ, 2002).

Among those municipalities whose governments approvedbudgets for agro-food control (57.2%), 70.2% had an annual budgetof less than 1 million yuan ($154,400), and only 10.9% of therespondents indicated that the funds could meet their demands.When the respondents were asked whether it was difficult tocontrol agro-food quality and safety effectively, most respondents(93.7%) had a positive response. Lack of funds was indicated to bethe biggest problem (42.2% of the respondents), whereas lack oftechnology was not considered to be a big problem (only 20.1% ofthe respondents consider it as the biggest problem).

In 75.4% of the municipalities, the number of farmer productionenterprises keeping production records was less than 100, and theaverage number of this kind of enterprise was 74. In comparison,the average number of all farmer production enterprises was up to534, according to our survey. This statistic shows that onlyapproximately one in seven farmer production enterprises paidattention to agro-food safety in the production process. Moreover,the average number of products certified as Safe Agro-food andGreen Food,6 according to the corresponding certification systems(MOA & AQSIQ, 2002; CGFDC, 2006), were 95.4 and 44.3,

consumers that it is “quality safe”.6 Green Food, a kind of high quality food, is produced according to a series of

specific standards whose level is between the standards of Safe Agro-food andOrganic Food.

Table 4Regional characteristics of the agro-food control systems in the municipalities inChina (n ¼ 214) based on the enquiry.

Situation EasternChina

CentralChina

Northeastern

WesternChina

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230 227

respectively. Relative to the number of farmer production enter-prises, these two average numbers were very small.

3.4. Regional characteristics

Table 4 shows the regional characteristics of the agro-foodcontrol systems in municipalities in China. Obviously, someregional differences existed. All of the investigated municipalitiesin Northeastern China had agro-food safety leadership groups,while approximately 80% of the municipalities in the other threeregions had such groups. In Central China, 38.6% of the munici-palities had preferential policies or subsidies for testing depart-ments in agro-food wholesale markets or farmer productionenterprises, while none of the investigated municipalities inNortheastern China had such policies. Moreover, in Eastern China,72.9% of the governments approved budgets for agro-food control,and the annual per capita fund was more than 0.44 yuan ($0.07),which was nearly 10 times the amount fund in Western China.

Overall, the governments of Eastern China established the bestagro-food control systems in the four regions, with the highestimplementation rate of the 17 enquired supervision measures,including system certification (80.0%), quantitative analysis (83.1%),the average number of farmer production enterprises making theproduction record (126), the average number of products certifiedas Safe Agro-food (156) and so on. In contrast, Western Chinaestablished the worst systems, mainly in the 13 enquired supervi-sion measures, including agro-food safety market access systems(20.8%), traceability systems (31.9%), the average number of prod-ucts certified as Green Food (22.4) and so on. This result suggeststhat a rather big gap of regional difference existed between EasternChina and Western China, which may be very difficult to narrowand probably would get wider because of the widening gap ofabsolute development speeds between the two regions (Wan,2010).

Table 3Specific work in agro-food control.

Questions Answers Subject(no.)

Percent(%)

Is agro-food quality and safety monitoredroutinely?

Yes 195 93.3No 14 6.7

If agro-food tests positive for chemicalresidues, will there be a furtherquantitative analysis?

Yes 92 59.4No 63 40.7

Are the GAP, HACCP and ISO seriessystems certifications implemented?

Yes 87 53.7No 75 46.3

Is a traceability system established? Yes 100 50.3No 99 49.8

Is an agro-food safety market accesssystem established?

Yes 78 37.5No 130 62.5

If the government approves a budget foragro-food control, how much is theannual budget?(million yuan)

Less than 1 80 70.21e2 14 12.32e3 2 1.8More than 3 18 15.8

How many farmer production enterpriseskeep production records? (number)

Less than 100 86 75.4100e199 14 12.3200e299 4 3.5300e399 7 6.1More than 399 3 2.6

How many agricultural products arecertified as Safe Agro-food? (number)

Less than 100 145 72.9100e199 26 13.1200e299 15 7.5300e399 6 3.0400e499 3 1.5More than 499 4 2.0

How many agricultural products arecertified as Green Food? (number)

Less than 100 154 89.0100e199 13 7.5200e299 4 2.3More than 299 2 1.2

3.5. Ranking the scores of the municipalities based on factoranalysis

The data matrix of 214 samples for all the above 23 variables wasanalyzed by the factor analysis. The results of the KMO measure ofsampling adequacy (0.705) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity(Sig.¼ 0.000) show that the partial correlation among and betweenvariables is strong enough and that the correlation matrix is nota unit matrix. Therefore, factor analysis is applicable to the datamatrix.

The first 14 principal factors (k ¼ 14) cumulatively account for81.63% of the total variance, while the rest of the data dispersioncould be considered as random. Factor 1 was the largestcontributor, explaining 16.7% of the variability, while Factor 2could account for 9.8% of the variability (Table 5). Safe Agro-food,Green Food and system certification were found to contribute tothe major loadings to Factor 1; government performance evalua-tion system, responsibility contract and agro-food safetycommitment contributed to the major loadings to Factor 2; thetraceability system, market access system and leadership groupcontributed to the major loadings to Factor 3; and other variablesalso majorly loaded on some principal factor from Factor 4 to 14.Each variable was a positive contributor to the major load of itsprincipal factor.

Each municipality’s total score is calculated by the model offactor analysis. Out of 214 municipalities, 196 were selected forfactor analysis. Of these, 1.0% of the municipalities had the highest

China

Our food control system includes (%) (%) (%) (%)Specialized supervision authority 64.4 64.6 84.2 70.8Agro-food Safety Public Services

in townships26.1 12.8 5.3 7.1

Department for agricultural lawenforcement

63.4 53.1 21.1 46.6

Agro-food safety leadership group 82.2 83.3 100.00 80.8Government performance evaluation

system90.3 83.3 88.2 81.7

Responsibility contract 90.1 81.3 88.2 84.5Agro-food safety commitment 71.0 62.5 37.5 46.6Budget for agro-food control 72.9 56.3 33.3 48.6Local laws and regulations relevant

to agro-food safety28.6 25.5 15.8 23.6

Preferential policies or subsidiesfor the establishment of testingdepartments

32.8 38.6 0.0 19.7

Preferential policies or subsidiesfor the certification of agro-food

71.4 52.3 23.1 43.1

System certification 80.0 53.9 45.5 29.8Routine monitoring 97.2 91.7 88.9 91.6Quantitative analysis 83.1 61.0 50.0 28.9Agro-food safety market access system 44.9 58.3 21.1 20.8Traceability system 61.2 66.0 37.5 31.9How much/How many Mean Mean Mean MeanTesting agencies under the government 7.4 5.0 4.9 3.7Testing agencies with the CMA 1.7 1.1 0.7 0.7Agro-food wholesale markets with

testing departments5.3 2.6 3.0 1.9

Annual budgets for agro-food control 208.5 57.0 16.0 11.3Farmer production enterprises keeping

production records125.8 65.5 100.3 31.1

Agricultural products certified as SafeAgro-food

155.8 66.1 109.6 46.2

Agricultural products certified asGreen Food

64.3 35.5 87.1 22.4

Table 5Loading matrix of rotated factor.

Variables Factor

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Green Food 0.846a �0.010 �0.052 �0.048 0.000 0.073 �0.132 0.132 0.029 0.056 0.124 0.113 �0.004 0.025Safe Agro-food 0.828 �0.025 0.055 0.012 0.160 0.138 0.119 0.045 0.051 0.071 0.111 �0.035 �0.012 0.057System certification 0.459 0.091 0.216 0.222 0.024 �0.263 0.190 �0.250 �0.023 �0.158 �0.290 0.171 0.250 0.178Government performance

evaluation system�0.005 0.857 0.025 0.049 �0.088 �0.025 0.123 0.056 0.069 0.097 0.033 0.060 0.027 �0.087

Responsibility contract 0.026 0.849 0.077 �0.052 0.012 0.096 0.028 0.077 �0.020 �0.005 �0.014 0.007 0.052 0.089Agro-food safety commitment �0.086 0.519 0.298 0.089 0.206 �0.102 �0.096 0.104 0.100 �0.379 0.164 0.057 �0.125 0.276Traceability system 0.034 0.051 0.816 0.165 0.126 �0.020 0.040 �0.034 �0.054 �0.087 0.019 0.156 0.033 0.041Market access system 0.069 0.073 0.621 �0.107 �0.111 0.143 0.162 0.453 0.208 �0.027 �0.137 0.272 0.096 �0.107Leadership group �0.005 0.351 0.588 �0.077 0.027 �0.160 0.085 �0.139 0.326 0.253 �0.078 �0.317 0.041 0.055Governmental testing agencies �0.017 �0.011 0.071 0.904 0.110 0.018 �0.005 0.092 0.048 0.091 0.044 0.047 0.052 �0.036Testing agencies with the CMA 0.148 �0.015 0.076 0.152 0.728 0.307 0.247 0.133 �0.109 0.192 0.025 �0.089 �0.034 �0.113Quantitative analysis 0.083 �0.042 0.079 0.056 0.696 �0.059 �0.140 0.026 0.352 �0.179 �0.049 0.138 0.286 0.029Production records 0.145 0.037 �0.060 �0.004 0.162 0.851 0.047 �0.088 0.052 �0.148 0.073 0.048 0.051 0.123Agro-food wholesale markets with

testing departments0.448 0.068 0.183 0.381 �0.132 0.489 0.002 0.141 0.114 0.012 �0.240 �0.177 �0.127 0.032

Preferential policies or subsidiesfor testing departments

�0.022 0.108 0.099 �0.018 0.026 0.027 0.914 0.062 0.099 �0.002 0.059 0.037 0.041 0.107

Annual budgets 0.372 0.082 0.041 0.381 0.259 0.105 0.426 0.205 0.197 �0.103 �0.174 0.014 �0.124 0.153Local laws and regulations 0.161 0.158 �0.001 0.158 0.124 �0.079 0.080 0.863 0.070 0.010 0.018 �0.064 0.011 0.093Budget for agro-food control 0.081 0.064 0.072 0.077 0.091 0.077 0.130 0.096 0.886 0.068 0.061 0.120 0.004 0.001Specialized supervision authority 0.074 0.056 �0.015 0.094 0.024 �0.133 �0.028 0.020 0.071 0.856 0.030 0.171 0.027 0.083Department for law enforcement 0.156 0.056 �0.031 0.022 �0.016 0.029 0.042 �0.003 0.047 0.007 0.920 �0.037 0.064 0.031Public Services in townships 0.071 0.078 0.162 0.037 0.028 �0.002 0.040 �0.043 0.127 0.176 �0.045 0.868 0.023 0.037Routine monitoring �0.017 0.048 0.059 0.026 0.103 0.023 0.023 0.020 0.013 0.045 0.064 0.016 0.945 0.006Preferential policies or subsidies

for certification of agro-food0.109 0.046 0.017 �0.024 �0.051 0.114 0.130 0.063 0.001 0.071 0.022 0.028 0.014 0.935

% of Variance 16.723 9.847 6.955 6.031 5.762 5.373 4.817 4.470 4.072 3.992 3.735 3.511 3.288 3.058

a Bold values indicate the highest loading.

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230228

total scores (F > 0.9); 8.7% had higher total scores (0.9 � F > 0.3);33.2% had common total scores (0.3 � F > 0); 50.0% had lower totalscores (0 > F � �0.3); and 7.1% had the lowest total scores(�0.3> F��0.6). Zero points indicated an average level. Accordingto Fig. 2 it could be concluded that the total scores also showedsome regional differences. The municipalities whose total scoreswere above 0 points accounted for 62.1%, 55.6%, 25.0% and 20.3%,respectively, of the total municipalities in Eastern China, CentralChina, Northeastern China and Western China. Eastern Chinaincluded all the highest scoring municipalities (F > 0.9), and 22.7%of the municipalities in this region had higher total scores(0.9 � F > 0.3). In comparison, none of the municipalities inWestern China had a total score higher than 0.3. The result

Fig. 2. Total scores of the municipal agro-food control systems in four regions based onfactor analysis (n ¼ 196).

suggested that the closer to the coast the region is located, thebetter agro-food control systems were established, generallybecause the coastal areas have a prosperous economy and openinformation communication, which are crucial and essential toestablish the system.

4. Discussion

Governments seem to pay great attention to agro-food control.By signing responsibility contracts, municipal governments requiresupervision departments and the governments at lower levels tostrictly carry out their obligations of supervision. The measure ofbringing the indicators of performance of agro-food control intolocal government performance evaluation systems encouragesofficials to improve their management of agro-food quality andsafety to receive a high performance review. In addition, due to theagro-food safety commitment signed with the supervisiondepartments, farmer production enterprises or specialized farmercooperatives guarantee agro-food safety on their credit. Asa measure of public administration (Li & Gan, 2011), the govern-ments’ agro-food control is aimed to ensure public interest, sopeople are more likely to believe government agencies than anyprofit group. Finally, the governments’ high attentionwill bring outa positive social effect. According to Tähkäpää, Maijala, Hörman,Poutiainen-Lindfors, and Korkeala (2008), participation indecision-making and a higher awareness of governmental and localauthorities as decision-makers about food control seem to havea positive effect on food control resourcing. When the respondentswere asked to rearrange five factors, including the lack of tech-nology, the shortage of funds, multi-sectoral management,governments’ insufficient priorities and others, according to theirdifficulty in agro-food control, the least respondents (10.3%) indi-cated that the shortage of enough priorities was the biggestproblem.

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230 229

However, the governments’ high attention is not clearly reflec-ted in local legislation. A few of the investigated municipalitiesenacted local laws on food or agricultural products or built thedepartments for agricultural law enforcement. Compared with thefood legislation of developed countries, relevant laws needimprovement in China. China lacks unified standards in the legis-lation of standard systems, inspection systems and market super-vision, and the enforcement of food safety laws is weak (Li, Bian, &Wu, 2009). Some researchers (Mensah & Julien, 2011; Weimer &Vining, 1999) believe that the statutory regulatory approach isparticularly deemed necessary because by its nature of food, whereit is considered to be a good based on experience, and because ofthe inability of consumers to determine food safety before purchaseor consumption due to information asymmetry. If agro-food controlis implemented mainly through local commitment, not legislation,there may be a risk of weak enforceability, and officials may havefree rein of agro-food control. In addition, legislation can confirmthe forbiddance and the punishment for illegal operation. Asa coercive measure, legislation is perceived to be a useful tool infood control by most food control officials (Jokela, Vehmas, &Lundén, 2009).

Contrary to the great attention paid by the governments to foodsafety, the shortage of funds was regarded as the biggest problemby 42.2% of the respondents. Of the investigated governments,42.8% did not approve budgets for agro-food control, and relevantpreferential policies or subsidies were not widely promulgated.This means that if local agro-food quality and safety supervisiondepartments want to control agro-food safety, they must solve theproblem of the fund shortage by themselves, which is very difficultfor agro-food control officials. In addition, the lack of fiscal supportmay bring about some further problems, such as the lack ofpersonnel training, the low frequency of tests and few certificationsof safe agro-food. In the preliminary construction phase of thesesystems, fiscal support is necessary, and increased funding for foodsafety is a good step (Elliot, 2009). For operators or producers,production of safe agro-food has some positive externalities,including an overflow of economic income, covering the cost ofoptimizing the ecological environment and other industries’external cost (Liu & Xia, 2010), which increase the cost of produc-tion. Currently, a great challenge hindering the compliance ofenterprises to food safety management systems is the high cost ofdevelopment and implementation (Mensah and Julien, 2011). Ifthese enterprises are not supported by the governments withenough funds, they would not like to or not be able to produce safeagro-food.

In addition, the most common challenge for local agro-foodcontrol officials is to establish Agro-food Safety Public Services intownships. As a transitional and non-independent department,Agro-food Safety Public Services is responsible for agro-foodquality and safety supervision in a township where the agro-foodsupervision departments have not been set up in China. But inour investigation, most municipalities did not set up Agro-foodSafety Public Services in their townships (85.4%). Moreover, theexisting Agro-food Safety Public Services suffer from the lack oftechnicians, aging of personnel and technological backwardness.When farmers run into some technical problems, many Agro-foodSafety Public Services in their townships are not able to helpthem (He, 2010). However, fewer municipal respondents consid-ered the lack of technology to be the biggest problem (20.1%). Thedifference between the situations in towns and municipalities maybe due to the fact that there are more technicians in municipalagro-food control systems, yet fewer of them arewilling to go to thevillages and towns to provide technical services. The reality inChina is that the majority of agro-food is produced in villages andtowns, where Agro-food Safety Public Services are crucial to control

agro-food safety at the source. These services can solve not only thefarmers’ technical problems but also the lack (or high cost) ofinformation about this product attribute that is the fundamentalcause of the market failure in food safety (Unnevehr, 1996). Forfarmers, Agro-food Safety Public Services in townships can helpthem improve product quality and sales. Therefore, the farmersmight be more willing to produce safe products. Wu and He (2007)consider that agro-food quality testing and inspection systemsshould be strengthened in the existing Public Service. In this case,agro-food safety and quality can be ensured on the basis of testresults.

Another problem is multi-sectoral management. According toour survey, many groups and agencies are being established, suchas agro-food safety leadership groups, specialized agro-food qualityand safety supervision authorities and testing departments withinagro-food wholesale markets or farmer production enterprises. Butin most municipalities, agro-food quality and safety supervisiondepartments in charge of plantation, livestock and aquatic productsafety were not unified as one department, which represents a typeof management approach by the category of products. Meanwhile,another different type of management approach in China is thewhole process management “from farm to table”, which involvesmany departments, such as the Health Ministry, AgricultureDepartment, Commerce Ministry, General Administration ofQuality Supervision, Administration for Industry and Commerce,Customs Service and so on. Simultaneous adoption of the twomanagement approaches by governments results in multi-management, unclear responsibilities, inefficiency, fragmentationand the lack of a uniform coordination mechanism in many aspects(Wang, 2004). Additionally, different and uncoordinated manage-ment results in inefficient uses of resources and increased andsometimes conflicting burdens on operators and producers (Lei,Zheng, & Xiao, 2008). If specialized agro-food quality and safetysupervision authorities were set up according to product categoryor production process, and the existing scattered departments werealso integrated within them, the newmanagement might optimizethe allocation of resources and improve efficiency. Also, thesupervision would be better if more than one department orauthority could claim to be in charge of agro-food control than if allcould claim that it is not their fault.

Our results also show some regional differences in the estab-lishment of systems. This phenomenon is mentioned in many fieldsurveys, such as farmer quality (Xin, Mao, & Luo, 2005) and issuesincluding those of agriculture, farmers and rural areas (Liu, Cheng,Zhu, & Zeng, 2006). Generally, the situation in the east is better thanin the central and the western regions. So it is not surprising to findthe same situation in the establishment of agro-food controlsystems. According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic ofChina (SCNPS, 2004), “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China areequal before the law.” Public authorities are therefore obligated tothe equal application of the law to protect every citizen. Hence, allfood operators should be uniformly treated by the authoritiesunless there is a valid reason to treat them differently (Heuru,2003). A serious regional imbalance in the establishment of agro-food control systems is obviously against the principle of “givingpriority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness” (CPCCentral Committee, 1993). The differences among the four regionsmay result from the different natural resources and capital abun-dance and China’s earlier non-balanced development strategies.With the plans of Western Region Development, Revitalization ofNortheast Old Industrial Base and the Rise of Central Chinaproposed in China’s 10th Five-year Plan (2001e2005) for theNational Economic and Social Development (NPC, 2001), non-balanced coordinative development strategies replaced non-balanced development strategies. Non-balanced coordinative

L. Yang et al. / Food Control 26 (2012) 223e230230

development strategies that accept the views of traditional balancedevelopment strategies and non-balanced development strategiestake into account regional differences, advantages, disadvantagesand total benefits and, therefore, are probably more suitable forChina (Zhang, 2003).

5. Conclusions

Local governments paid great attention to agro-food safety, andlocal officials were actively structuring agro-food control systems.Yet many difficulties and problems still exist when implementingnew control requirements in practice, and the results of this studyshow that local agro-food legislation, funds and Agro-food SafetyPublic Services in townships were seriously lacking, and multi-sectoral management reduced the efficiency of agro-food control.We also must acknowledge that agro-food operators located indifferent regions are being treated differently. New requirementsset by the Food Safety Lawmake it a challenging task for local agro-food control officials to establish agro-food control systems, espe-cially during the preliminary stage of establishment whenresources are relatively scarce, and the system’s structure may bedefective. It is meaningful to explore the implementation of thenew requirements in question in this study, in China.

Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support fromthe National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No.09BJY069).

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