Chinanews.com client Beijing, June 25 Question: Foreign meat joint factories have become the severely affected areas. Can imported meat be eaten with confidence?
Reporter Zhang Ni
Over the past few days, multi-national meat processing companies have become the most severely affected areas in the outbreak of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic. Thousands of employees have been infected and enterprises have stopped working. These sudden changes have made domestic people feel uneasy: Can meat flowing into the Chinese market be eaten with confidence?
Data Map: On May 3 local time, a supermarket in the San Francisco Bay Area hung out a prominent sign to remind customers to maintain "social distance". China News Service reporter Liu Guanguan
Multiple factors superimposed on the combined meat factory to become a severely affected area
According to incomplete statistics, since April this year alone, there have been at least 20 outbreaks of collective infections in meat factory workers in the world, and enterprises in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Brazil and other countries have successively "fallen".
As of the 23rd, the outbreak of aggregate infection in Germany’s largest meat processing company Tennis has caused over 1,900 local diagnoses. The Gütersloh County and the neighboring Wallendorf County where the plant is located will implement "closing the city" measures.
In the United States, as early as late May, many of its domestic large-scale meat processing companies have cumulatively reported more than 11,000 employees diagnosed with New Coronary Pneumonia, involving multiple product lines of multiple companies.
Why do large-scale infections occur frequently in this key livelihood industry? The reason is closely related to the company's own working environment and other factors.
In order to prevent food from spoiling and to avoid contamination by food-borne disease pathogens, a strong ventilation system will be installed in the meat factory to keep the temperature low in the factory. The New Corona virus just likes this low temperature environment.
In addition, as far as the workers themselves are concerned, meat processing enterprises are labor-intensive, and there is no guarantee that workers have a safe social distance on the assembly line. Some foreign media have previously analyzed that due to the low labor remuneration of such jobs, some workers are local low-income groups or immigrants. The living environment and commuting conditions of these groups are limited, and the risk of contracting new pneumonia is also inherent. Higher.
But even so, many companies are still unable to stop work under the severe epidemic.
Because meat processing enterprises belong to the people's livelihood industry, such enterprises and related feed, aquaculture, slaughtering, processing, distribution and distribution are all the objects of priority guarantees of governments of all countries.
US President Trump signed an executive order as early as April, using the National Defense Production Act to authorize the US meat processing plant to continue operating during the new crown epidemic to ensure the continued supply of beef, pork and poultry to U.S. consumers product.
The superposition of multiple factors has caused a large number of factories in Europe and America to become the hardest hit areas in the epidemic. Nowadays, some factories are forced to shut down and stop production, and some even cause the entire region to return to the era of "closing the city".
Data Map: On June 19, citizens buy pork in a Jingkelong supermarket in Chaoyang District, Beijing. China News Agency reporter Jiang Qiming
Can imported meat be eaten with confidence?
Frequent outbreaks of joint meat factories abroad have also caused concerns among the domestic people.
Domestically, this round of epidemic rebound is also suspected to be imported from outside of Beijing, coupled with China's own food import structure characteristics, making frozen meat, etc. become the focus of monitoring.
As the world's largest pork consumer, China's average annual pork consumption accounts for 50% of the world. In terms of imports, China currently mainly imports pork from the EU, North and South America and other regions. According to official data, in the first quarter of this year, pork imports increased by 1.7 times and beef imports increased by 64.9%.
Earlier, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Organization for Animal Health also stated that the risk of coronavirus transmission in the food trade is extremely low, and it is not recommended that countries take restrictions on international trade, including food, due to the new coronary pneumonia epidemic.
This raises a question that the people are most worried about: Will the meat be "poisoned"? Can you rest assured?
Regarding this concern of the people, a reporter from Chinanews.com recently learned from the General Administration of Customs that, as a matter of caution, since February this year, the General Administration of Customs has deployed some customs to deal with some imported goods, without affecting the import trade. The samples and related environment were tested for new coronavirus nucleic acid samples, and the results were all negative.
Since June 18, the General Administration of Customs has suspended a series of factory products that have been infected by employees. A total of 15,638 samples were tested by the national customs on the day, and the results were all negative.
In addition, on the evening of June 18, local customs also notified local food import companies to fill out food safety commitments.
This means that in order to ensure food safety, if importers want to import food, they must sign this food safety commitment; for foreign exporters, if they want to sell products to China, they must also sign this food safety The letter of commitment can continue to export to the Chinese market.
It is understood that at present, ports across the country have been fully deployed to eliminate killings.
Staff collect samples of relevant environment and key fresh food. Photo courtesy of Shanghai CDC
The detailed prevention and control measures can not be ignored!
With people's more and more comprehensive understanding of the way of virus transmission, prevention and control measures are constantly refined, as far as possible to plug various "holes".
In fact, since the newly confirmed local cases have appeared again in Beijing, the market supervision and other departments across the country have quickly opened large inspections.
Beijing launched a comprehensive investigation of the fresh and frozen meat trading market. In addition, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Hefei and other places have also carried out comprehensive investigations on the farmer's market and large supermarkets, especially on the detection of fresh food, frozen meat, aquatic products, etc., and some regions have also carried out nucleic acids on relevant practitioners. Sampling.
On June 18th, the National Health and Safety Commission issued the "Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of the Normalization of the New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Situation in Key Locations in Key Units in Key Areas in Summer in Low-risk Areas", which added protection for food consumers, food practitioners and other people. Claim.
The "Guide" also specifically mentions that food consumers should wash their hands with soap and running water for at least 20 seconds after handling raw meat, poultry, aquatic products, etc. Do not rinse raw meat products directly under the faucet to prevent splash contamination.
Although the World Health Organization has stated that, based on the previous experience of investigation of epidemics caused by coronavirus, no cases of human transmission through food consumption have occurred.
However, in the face of cunning viruses, you still cannot be taken lightly.
Today, the source of the rebound in the domestic epidemic has not been clearly confirmed, and the cumulative number of diagnoses worldwide has approached 10 million. Under the complex situation, if you want to keep the hard-won anti-epidemic achievements, you must fight for twelve points and be alert to all potential risks! (Finish)