Beijing: China announced it will suspend testing chilled and frozen foods for frozen foodstarting on January 8 in the latest round of easing Covid controls after an alarming increase in cases. According to the article, the State Administration for Market Regulation would no longer mandate that all imported chilled and frozen foods enter centralised warehouses for cleaning and testing prior to being sold on the domestic market.
Notably, in 2020, in response to an epidemic in a wholesale market, China started testing imported chilled and frozen foods for COVID. The procedure was disliked by traders and hampered the delivery of food to China. Additionally, it increased expenses for importers and exporters alike.
‘The removal of the testing and disinfection standards would undoubtedly help the meat industry by lowering additional costs and accelerating the flow of commodities’, according to Huang Juhui, founder of Beijing Minsun Consulting Co.
‘It will be a positive step toward the resumement of regular commerce if the reported COVID testing and disinfection of imported beef at ports and at in-market distribution sites is discontinued. Both importers and exporters would appreciate the change, which should reduce costs’, noted Joel Haggard, senior vice president of the US Meat Export Federation’s Asia Pacific Region.
However, despite being sick, physicians continue to work in hospitals where the elderly are crammed and fighting to breathe due to China’s greatest Covid epidemic. Due to the alarming increase of Covid cases, China is apparently seeing congested hospitals, overworked physicians, overcrowded crematoriums, piled up dead in mortuaries and on the sides of highways, and lengthy lines outside clinics.
According to a report in Bloomberg News, the National Health Commission reported during a meeting that around 248 million individuals, or over 18% of China’s population, were infected in the first 20 days of December.
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