Stronger steps on safety of food set

China still faces severe challenges to ensure food safety, despite improvements in recent years, and authorities will maintain a zero-tolerance attitude toward violations of laws, the national food safety watchdog said.

"A number of problems still exist in food safety, and supervision still falls short of public expectations," Bi Jingquan, chief of the China Food and Drug Administration, said at a news conference on Monday. "We will punish irregularities with the most severe measures this year to prevent and control food and drug risks."

Last year, the administration organized inspections covering 257,000 samples of food available on the domestic market, an increase of about 50 percent over 2015, Bi said.