ENG-1999 — Page 233

HEALTH

Food and Trade Licensing

The Provisional Urban Council and the Provisional Regional Council were the authorities responsible for the licensing of food businesses and the issue of permits for the sale of restricted foods including frozen confections, sushi and sashimi.

The two councils also issued trade licences to places of public entertainment such as theatres, cinemas and entertainment machine centres, places of amusement including public bowling alleys and public skating rinks. Private swimming pools and undertakers were required to be licensed by the councils and the Provisional Urban Council also licensed commercial bathhouses in the urban area.

In 1999, the councils received and processed 4 109 applications for food business licences, 862 for restricted food permits, 513 for places of public entertainment licences and 71 for other trade licences.

Food Hygiene

Food safety continued to be a subject of public interest. To implement the 1998 Policy Initiative, the Department of Health introduced the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system into the food industry.

HACCP is a food safety assurance system recognised by international authorities such as the World Health Organisation, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the Codex Alimentarius Commission. It involves identification of hazards in different stages of food production, assessment of the related risks and determination of control procedures at each critical step to reduce or eliminate the risks. In 1999, the department's activities for promoting HACCP covered at least 3 per cent of the local food industry.

An international food safety crisis occurred in June. Some animal feed products in Europe were found to be contaminated by a cancer-causing chemical-dioxin. Several categories of food products were affected. After assessing the situation in Europe, the department advised the local food trade to suspend the sale of poultry, eggs, pork, beef and their related products from Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands in early June. It maintained close liaison of the European authorities and kept abreast of developments.

With adequate safety assurances from relevant bodies and satisfactory local laboratory analysis results, sales of the food products from France, Germany and the Netherlands resumed on June 29. Additional information from Belgium, where the contamination first occurred, proved that Belgian milk, dairy and chocolate products were also safe for consumption. Sales of such products resumed on July 30.

A new measure was introduced during the year for the prevention of ciguatera fish poisoning. Importers now send samples of coral reef fish from new fishing grounds to the Government for ciguatoxin testing before actually purchasing the fish. This helped to reduce the risk of importing toxic fish.

The last outstanding part of the Food and Drugs (Composition and Labelling) (Amendment) Regulation 1996 came into force on June 1. It required pre-packaged deep frozen food and pre-packaged food with long shelf lives to bear the 'Best Before' dates. In November, the Food Adulteration (Artificial Sweeteners) Regulations were amended to allow for the use of another five artificial sweeteners in Hong Kong.

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