Recently, the General Office of the State Council has issued the Measures for the Review and Assessment of Food Safety Work (the "Measures") which shall come into force as of the promulgation date.
The Measures provide for several matters in relation to the said assessment, including its purpose, subjects, organization, principles, contents, and steps, as well as the determination of grades, application of results, and assessment rules, specifying that the subjects of the assessment shall be all provincial governments and the contents of the assessment shall cover the performance of various food safety responsibilities. According to the Measures, the assessment shall be made up of four steps, namely on-site inspection, self-inspection-based scoring, departmental review, and overall review. The Measures also point out that it is possible to conduct the assessment with reference to opinions issued by third-party institutions. According to the Measures, the assessment is subject to a scoring method with a benchmark score of 100, and the assessment results are graded by three levels, i.e. A, B and C. Subjects under any of the listed circumstances, such as "where an especially major food safety incident occurred or several major food safety incidents occurred successively in its administrative region", shall be graded with C in the assessment, and when necessary, the main responsible persons of the relevant provincial governments may be subject to interviews by senior officials of the State Council.