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should know what to do when incident occurs. Hence, each party involved in the incident could play their role effectively and take appropriate actions and widespread panic could thus be avoided. With these remarks, I support Mr. Francis Tang Chi-ho's motion.
CHAIRMAN (in Cantonese):—Mr. Manuel CHAN, do you want to speak on the motion?
MR. TIM S. Manuel Chan (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I would like to raise 2 points concerning this motion. Firstly, we know that food manufacturers produce food products in factories and then these products are sold in the market. The first 2 parts of the process belong to the work of the Urban Services Department. The first part is licensing. The Department will set requirements for food factories for the purpose of controlling the quality of beverages and food production in future. The Department will then inspect the manufacturer's factory and machinery at regular intervals to monitor its hygienic condition. When the finished products are sold in the market, Health Inspectors of the Department of Health will take samples for inspection. However, the work done by the Department of Health is inadequate and very often their action is led by the media and is taken only when problems arise. For example, when vegetables were found to be contaminated recently, the Department of Health took more vegetable samples for checking; when a new disease was found in beef, more samples were taken for inspection. Its remedial action is taken always after instead of before the problem occurred. Therefore, I think we should strengthen our work in sample checking on food and beverages. If the Department of Health does not have adequate resources to carry out this work thoroughly, the Urban Services Department and the Urban Council should consider re-distribution of work, e.g. Departmental officers could carry out regular inspections of food premises, whether they are licensed or not, to check their hygienic condition and production lines. I think food samples could be taken during these inspections for examination by the Department of Health or other departments. In this way, the problem of inadequate resources or shortage of Inspectors of the Department of Health could be solved. I would like to reiterate that the Department should not take follow-up action only after the problem is found, that is when the beverages are sold to the public. I hope the Urban Services Department and the Department of Health could review the method they are currently using for quality inspection. I hereby support the motion of Mr. Francis TANG Chi-ho.
Chairman (in Cantonese):—The motion has been moved and seconded, and those who wish to speak had spoken respectively. Now it is put to the vote.
The question was put.
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