Online family kitchen to be supervised

An official from China Food and Drug Administration said that online food safety regulation will be unveiled next week and tougher enforcement and sterner punishments will be introduced. Over this issue, Xinhua News Agency said that “online family kitchen” should be supervised and regulated.

Thanks to the wide use of the mobile application, online family kitchen provides office workers with a huge opportunity to have home-made food without going out. But this new-born online business comes with many problems.

Online kitchen ordering is relatively more dispersed compared with normal online ordering leading to difficulties and higher cost in supervision and management. Lack of supervision may bring about food safety problems such as an increasing number of illegal food workshops. Because of this, many people are opposed to this new practice.

But there are also supporters who claim that online family kitchen isn’t more risky than regular food ordering for the following three reasons:

First, home-made products depend on reputation and are marketed as coming from kitchens using higher quality materials than are used in restaurants. Second, home kitchenware procedures don’t allow chefs to prepare many meals at once, so they have more time to work on quality. Third, online valuation systems may somewhat reduce and control the risk.

Xinhua News Agency said that the way to make online family kitchen food less risky is to apply relevant rules on third-party platforms for online food transactions.

Specifically, these platforms must be required to implement real-name registration for operators and specify their safety management responsibility. And they should also examine the licenses of possible operators to control illegal behavior, which, if it occurs, must be reported to the administration.

Once online family kitchen is included in third-party platforms, we can apply new food safety rules and reduce the risks, Xinhua News Agency said.