Lawmakers Find Food Safety Centre Work Distasteful

Legco's Public Accounts Committee has criticised the Centre for Food Safety's performance saying it is "unacceptable" and that lawmakers are seriously concerned about the centre's failure to deliver test results on time.

The criticism by legislators follows an audit report that found it could take months for a food sample to be checked. The committee has been looking into the Centre for Food Safety's work after last year's audit report flagged up long delays in delivering test results.

Presenting their conclusions to Legco, committee chairman Abraham Shek was quite scathing in his criticism.

"The committee expresses its serious concern and finds it unacceptable that as a large number of some 66,000 food samples were taken annually for food testing, the CFS has not provided sufficient guidelines for its staff on some major procedures including the sampling, the workflow, as well as the timing on announcing the food testing results," he said.

Shek said the centre needs to review its workflow, update its internal guidelines, and check whether it has enough manpower and laboratories to handle any urgent food-related incidents.

He said the committee is also dismayed about a survey the centre is carrying out on people's eating habits that is running behind schedule.

He said the committee's recommendations are only partial at this stage and a full report will be released later.