Press Releases
Government pledges to promote food safety, food hygiene
The Deputy Secretary for Health and Welfare, Mr Robin Gill, said today (Saturday) that food safety and food hygiene would be the focus of the Healthy Living Campaign this year.
Announcing the results of the latest series of 10 public opinion surveys commissioned by the Steering Committee on Healthy Living, Mr Gill said more than 500 people had been interviewed during each of the three surveys conducted over the past two months. The surveys were conducted by the Social Sciences Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong.
Results showed that respondents paid little attention to whether restaurants were licensed or not in their choice of food premises.
The factors commonly considered by most respondents in their choice of food premises were hygiene standards, the type of food provided and the price and taste of the food.
Only a minority (15 per cent) considered as the deciding factor to be whether the restaurants were licensed.
Slightly more than half of respondents said they knew how to find out whether food premises were licensed while the remaining said they had no idea at all.
"The Government is committed to raising the standards of food hygiene and food safety of Hong Kong," Mr Gill said.
"To this end, we will introduce various new measures and initiatives," he added.
To promote higher hygiene standards in food premises, Mr Gill noted that the two municipal councils planned to implement the proposals on Categorisation of Restaurants and Hygiene Manager Schemes in November this year.
Under the proposals, members of the public would be made aware of the rating given for hygiene standards in food premises. In addition, licensees would be actively encouraged to upgrade the hygiene in their premises.
The surveys also revealed that one-third of respondents said they had patronised unlicensed food premises/cooked food stalls in the past six months.
Among them, 71 per cent were aware of the risks to their health by eating unclean food. 24 per cent found nothing wrong to patronise unlicensed restaurants or cooked food stalls while another 10 per cent thought that it would encourage illegal hawking.
Another finding was that the public were not willing to report sub-standard hygiene conditions of food premises or food safety problems to the relevant authorities. 27 per cent of the respondents said they found it troublesome to make a report, 14 per cent found it of no use and 11 per cent did not know the channels of complaint.
As regards ratings on the cleanliness of food premises, the average score was 6 (on a 10-point scale) which is an improvement on the 5.4 score in December 1998.
The average score for cleaniness in markets has also risen from 4.6 in December to 5.3 in April 1999.
Mr Gill said, "The survey findings underline the need to change public attitude and habits in relation to food hygiene. In this connection, we will step up our education and publicity programmes. As a highlight event for this year, a large scale ceremony will be held at which representatives and employees of the food and catering industries will pledge support to promote clean and safe food. The event will take place in July."
End/Saturday, May 29, 1999
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