Research on the Current Situation and Strategies for Enhancing the Development and Capacity of Food Safety Inspection and Testing Institutions ——A Case Study of Zhejiang Province

Food is vital to the people, and safety comes first in food. Food safety is crucial to people's livelihood, economic development, and social stability. It represents people's aspiration for a better life and grabs great public attention. In recent years, while China has achieved significant progress in food safety, the situation remains severe, with incidents such as excessive residues of agricultural and veterinary drugs, as well as illegal addition of toxic and harmful substances. As an important technical support for ensuring food safety, food safety inspection and testing institutions also exhibit a mixed bag of performance. Problems such as inadequate personnel management, improper use of facilities and equipment, weak legal awareness resulting in issuance of false reports have frequently occurred, seriously disrupting the normal order of the inspection and testing market and affecting the authority and accuracy of food safety testing. Based on the capacity verification of inspection and testing organizations in Zhejiang Province in recent years, this paper studies the typical problems faced by food inspection and testing institutions in terms of management level and testing capabilities, analyzes the root causes in depth, and proposes specific strategies from three aspects: strengthening the main responsibility of inspection and testing institutions, combining regulatory departments with supervision and guidance, and enhancing industry self-discipline, aiming to continuously improve their inspection and testing capabilities, promote the high-quality development of food inspection and testing institutions, and effectively ensure the safety of every bite of food.