FOLLOWING a recent wave of food safety scandals, Jinshan District, Shanghai's back garden offering urban dwellers fruits and vegetables, is pioneering ahead to ensure the food it grows and raises is healthy and safe to eat.

As the city's southwestern gateway, Jinshan is ranked in the top four of Shanghai's agricultural bases. It boasts an area of 18,667 hectares for rice paddy, 12,667 for vegetables, 2,260 for fruits and 1,905 for aquaculture. Each year it provides almost 300,000 pigs to the market. "As one of the largest agricultural bases in the city, we are also shouldering the responsibility to offer safe and healthy products. Food safety is what we should bear in mind always," says Huang Huiyun, deputy secretary of CPC Shanghai Jinshan Agriculture Management Committee.

The priority is to set up an integrated system of inspection and monitoring for safe agricultural products.

"This is a tough job," admits Hu Wei, the committee's deputy director, pointing out that the district has thousands of individual self-employed farmers, who might only cultivate a small area of land and raise only one or two pigs and cattle in the backyard. "It poses a big challenge to the inspection and monitoring work."

Last October, the Jinshan Quality Inspection and Food Test Center for Agricultural Products was launched, which was the first and only institution at district-level among the city's other districts.

All the products ranging from rice, fruits and vegetables to poultry, livestock and fish have to be tested in the center before they can qualify to be sent to the market. These include the required tests on soils, fertilizers, seeds and the drug residues on livestock and poultry, and the pesticide residues on plants.

Testing products

At the same time, a total of 22 test rooms have been established in the district's towns, villages and agricultural bases. A team made up of 35 full-time inspectors was also set up.

In Langxia Town, a pilot-project food quality inspection station will be put into full operation this autumn. "If this project in Langxia goes well, we plan to promote it in other towns," Hu says.

"Jinshan's ultimate objective is to build a system on the basis of the farmers' self-discipline supported by the common inspection of the government and society," says the deputy director. "It needs us working from the bottom to the top."

The agriculture committee is building a team of safety food production assistant inspectors in every village, who are selected from local farmers. The project is being reported to the city's agricultural committee. If approved, each farmer inspector will be subsidized by the municipal, district and town levels.

Since 2009, various lectures and training on safety production have been held among growers and livestock raisers via local newspapers, television, mobile phone service platforms, on the squares and by the rice paddies.

A simplified brochure about China's regulations and laws on safety production is ensured to be delivered to the hands of each farmer.

"We also speed up the standardization of the production process to guarantee that each step is safe and reaching the standards," Hu says.

So far the district has a total of 56 model agricultural bases, seven national-rated and eight city-level, which provide the eco-green, organic and healthy foods.

Branded food

Jinshan's Fengjing pig from Fengjing Town was given the country's Protection of Original Production Area honor this April, the highest approval for agricultural food. The Luxiang peento, or flat peach from Luxiang Town, is applying for the label this year.

"We realize branding is one way out. Good things also need good selling," the deputy director says. "When talking of pig or peach, I hope Jinshan would be the first to pop up in people's minds."

Zhufeng melon from Zhujing Town, Jinshan Island rice from the coastal Shanyang Town and Siquan grape from Luxiang Town are also getting ready to grab this honor in two or three years.

This branding strategy has been reinforced after the surging food safety crisis in China recently. The district's eco-green Zhufeng watermelon was even more popular when the forchlorfenuron-added watermelon scandal (a kind of plant-growth regulator to make melons abnormally huge) was causing panic among the public last month.

"Our melons sell at 7 yuan (US$1.1) per 500 grams and it still cannot meet the need, while no one wants those huge melons even when they are lowered to 0.8 yuan," Hu says.

The district is also going to brand its Langxia strawberry. A 20-hectare strawberry-themed park will be set up in the town next year.

Jinshan's yellow peach, blueberry, kiwi fruit and cherry are also being put into the branding strategy in future.

The next step is to make Jinshan's quality agricultural products accessible to a wider range of city residents.

Several boutique shops have been set up in the downtown area in recent years but it's still not enough. This summer Jinshan will hold an agricultural products exhibition in the city center, making it more convenient for urban people to buy quality foods.

In addition, a drill on food safety accidents is held every year to set up a precaution system. Once a safety crisis happens, it requires the government act quickly to spot the source (grower or raiser), cut the supply, find out the cause and reduce the risk as much as possible.

Last year, the government regulated that all Jinshan-grown vegetables, fruits and pigs must get a "qualification certificate" before they enter the market. The certificate carries detailed information including the pesticides/feed used, planting and harvest time/birth date and grower's/raiser's name.

"It ensures that we can find out where the problem is in the shortest time in case any emergency occurs," Hu says. This regulation will be probably implemented on poultry and aquatic products in the next five years.