Food safety is a critical issue in China and has attracted much attention from the government and the society.

Prof. WANG Wuyi’s group at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) displays the geographical distribution of food safety related environmental problems including the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; background levels of heavy metals; discharge of wastewater and heavy metals; and use of additives and antibiotics in livestock and poultry breeding and aquatic products, and recommendations for countermeasures are provided through relating these problems with food producing areas. 

Food safety relates to the entire chain of food production (planting and breeding) - processing - packaging - storage and transportation - circulation (sales) - consumption. The geographical environment for planting and breeding are the fundamental conditions for food production.

Risk factors including the excessive application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, high background content of heavy metals, discharge of wastewater and heavy metals and excessive use of additives and antibiotics in livestock and poultry breeding and aquatic products, are all related to the food safety in China, and thus threatening public health. 

The air, water and the soils pollution have accumulated over the long term and restoring the environment will take time. What we need to focus on is the regional characteristics and distributional patterns of interactions between environment, food safety and health, through a thorough emphasis on the food safety as part of the co-governance of health, environment and development, and through a comprehensive multi-disciplinary research on environment - food safety – health as a whole.

Under the guidance of Prof. WANG, Dr. WANG LI and their colleagues, indicated that geographical environment related food safety issue is a multi-source problems which needs multidisciplinary research and multi-sectoral control. This related result was published in Journal of Resources and Ecology.

The work was supported by FORHEAD with funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Map of application levels for chemical fertilizer (a) and pesticides (b) (Image by Prof. Wuyi Wang’s group)