This Day, That Year

Item from Nov 14, 1993, in China Daily: Customers buy dried vegetables with green food labels at a market in downtown Beijing. In 1990, green food labeled by the Ministry of Agriculture by-and-large untainted by pollution began to appear on the market.

By improving the standards and the supervision mechanism, the country’s organic product certification system has become one of the strictest in the world.

At the same time, the country’s appetite for organic food products — those produced without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers and not containing genetically modified elements — has surged as people’s purchasing power and awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle grows.

Over the past few years, the organic food industry has been growing at an annual rate of 30 percent on average, according to China’s Certification and Accreditation Administration.

Last year, 1.74 billion packages of organic produce, valued at a combined 36 billion yuan ($5.4 billion), were sold nationwide, a rise of 16 percent from 2015, data from the administration showed.

The main products include cereals, beans, vege- tables, fruits, poultry, aquatic produce and processed goods, such as edible oils, wine and dairy products.

Last year, more than 11,000 businesses were certified to produce organic goods, and 1.52 million hectares of farmland were used for organic production, accounting for about 1 percent of the total.

China has become the world’s fourth-largest organic food consumer, but organic food penetration is still small, according to research company Zero Power Intelligence Group.

At the end of last year, China and New Zealand signed an agreement on mutual recognition of each other’s organic products. The country is also negotiating with other countries, including the United Kingdom, Denmark, Thailand and Mexico, for mutual recognition of organic certification.