Press Releases
Transcript of media session by SHWF on recall of pork by Shenzhen
Following is the transcript (English portion) of a media session by the
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, after attending the
"Building A Healthy Tomorrow" consultation session today (August 16):
Reporter: Can you tell us the progress so far? Do you think there is enough
communications with the Mainland authorities?
Dr Chow: I think we have very good communications regarding the direct supply of
food to Hong Kong and also the public health issues relating to Hong Kong.
Regarding the internal trade decisions, particularly between cities and
provinces, of course, we do not actually have direct information from each of
the provinces or cities. So we have to request every time if we have some news
regarding happenings in a certain city, we try to seek clarifications. This is
the reason why we think, particularly with Shenzhen and also Guangdong Province,
we should strengthen our communication mechanism and hope to establish much
better communications with relevant authorities.
Reporter: (inaudible)
Dr Chow: At the moment, I think the mechanism of safeguarding the safety of
food, particularly meat from China is very robust. I think we should strengthen
it all along. The only problem to this particular issue, I think is that we do
not know the reason for recalling the pork in Shenzhen. This is actually their
own decision. The limited information we have got is about a certain batch of
pork.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Tuesday, August 16, 2005
NNNN