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Following is the speech by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, on the food safety and environmental hygiene policy area at the special meeting of Finance Committee at Legislative Council today (April 13):

Chairman and Honourable Members,

Hong Kong has all along been a healthy and safe international city.  We boast a regional hub for people from all over the world to live, work and study.  The Health, Welfare and Food Bureau contributes to this through vigorous efforts to ward off infectious diseases and ensure the highest standard of hygiene in the city.  We are basically a gatekeeper.

This gatekeeper role is particularly important for this year, when Hong Kong will again draw worldwide attention with the opening of the Hong Kong Disneyland in September and with us hosting the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation in December.

Certainly, we have a bigger role to play and many more services to provide.  We provide health care and a social safety net.  We roll out family, youth, elderly and rehabilitation services.  We regulate drugs, health products, food and live produce.  We also work with the Women's Commission to promote the well-being of women in Hong Kong.

Our expenditure is mostly on human resources and we will ensure all public officers within the Hospital Authority (HA) and departments will align their operations with the policy objectives of the Bureau and give their best to accomplish our missions.

I would now highlight key resource provision and priority policy areas of our Bureau for the 2005-06 financial year.

In 2005-06, $67.8 billion recurrent provision is allocated to health, food and environmental hygiene, social welfare and women's interests policy areas.  This accounts for 34% of the total recurrent government expenditure and represents a real increase of 3.1% over the 2004-05 revised estimate.  The priority areas of our Bureau in the coming years are as follows.

On food safety and environmental hygiene side, our priorities in this financial year include the following.

In view of the recent avian influenza outbreaks in Southeast Asia, which indicate that the avian influenza viruses are becoming more pathogenic and causing higher fatality, we have recently announced our overall plan to reduce the risk of avian influenza outbreaks in Hong Kong.

As an immediate measure, we will maintain the maximum licensing capacity in local chicken farms at half of the existing chicken population to enable depopulation of live poultry, if necessary, be completed within a reasonable period of time.

As a longer-term measure, we propose to implement regional slaughtering together with a voluntary surrender scheme for poultry farmers and live poultry wholesalers.  We have already identified the Western Wholesale market for the development of a medium sized slaughterhouse on a pilot basis and a financial feasibility study is under way to ascertain the scope for private sector participation.

We also propose to provide ex-gratia payment to poultry farmers and live poultry wholesalers, as well as retraining for affected local live poultry farm and wholesale workers should they choose to surrender their licences/tenancies and cease operation permanently.  We are consulting the live poultry trade on the terms of the voluntary surrender scheme.  Our plan is to seek funding approval from the Legislative Council in this year.

On regulatory framework to enhance food safety, we will introduce a number of measures to enhance our food safety.  First of all, we will enhance our food surveillance, risk assessment and communication programmes.  We are assessing the need for setting up a framework for mandatory food recall in Hong Kong.  We have studied local experience on mandatory recall of non-food products, as well as overseas experience on food recalls.  We will further consider the details of the proposed regulatory framework for mandatory food recall in Hong Kong in consultation with the trade.

Besides, we have completed the public consultation exercise on our proposed labelling scheme for nutrition information in early 2004.  Public views are generally in support of the proposed nutrition labelling scheme.  We have also completed a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), which shows that substantial net benefits to the community would be available from the introduction of nutrition labelling in Hong Kong. We will report the results of the public consultation, the RIA and our implementation plan to the LegCo Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene.

We will also strengthen the control of the quality of water used for keeping live fish and shellfish intended for use for human consumption.  In this respect, we have appointed the Hong Kong Productivity Council to design and operate a voluntary Accreditation Scheme for Seawater Suppliers.  The scheme will help ensure the availability of reliable seawater supply and assist restaurants and seafood stalls in complying with the prescribed standard of fish tank water quality.  We are also formulating a proposal to prohibit abstraction of seawater from specified areas, such as the Victoria Harbour and typhoon shelters, for keeping live seafood.  We will consult LegCo Panel and the trade on our proposal shortly.

LegCo Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene has set up a subcommittee to study the Streamlining of Food Business Licensing.  We are working closely with the subcommittee with a view to streamlining the procedure of food business licensing for the benefit of the trade as well as our departments in view of the growing workload.

On fisheries, our priority this year is to better conserve our fisheries resources.  In view of the depleting fisheries resources in Hong Kong, we will introduce a legislative proposal to set up a fishing licence system, to designate fisheries protection areas and to introduce a territory-wide closed season.  We hope to better conserve our fisheries resources through the implementation of these measures.

Ends/Wednesday, April 13, 2005

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