Press Releases

Acting SFH on food safety

Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Acting Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Gabriel Leung, at a media stand-up session in the Legislative Council Building today (May 19):

Reporter: (about the shellfish poisoning cases)

Acting Secretary for Food and Health: I understand that this issue of paralytic shellfish poisoning is of concern to the public and of course it also concerns me personally and us as the Food and Health Bureau very much. Through our executive agency, the Centre for Health Protection, we are closely following up on both the public health effects after consumption of these shellfish products as well as trying to identify the source of these shellfish products. The important thing to bear in mind is that you can rest assured that we will closely follow up both through our laboratories, in term of testing other products on the markets, and we are currently doing the tests, and as soon as we have results, we will publicise them. We are making sure that each and every case of report that we get, and since yesterday we have received one further report as of noon time today that is suspected to be linked to the issue of current shellfish poisoning. So, both for public health on the human side as well as identifying the food safety angle, we are doing everything we can to follow this up. With the Food Safety Bill in the future which we will be tabling for the Legislative Council's consideration before the end of this legislative year, we would have much less difficulty and much more efficient tracing of the origins and sources of such problem products.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)


Ends/Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Issued at HKT 15:59

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