Deputy Secretary-General of the China Children and Teenagers' Foundation (CCTF) Zhu Xisheng gives a speech at the conference. [CCTF]

With support from other governmental bodies, China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) and the China Children and Teenagers' Foundation (CCTF) jointly held the 13th China Food Safety Annual Conference in Beijing on November 7-8.

"The CCTF has taken the safeguarding of children's healthy growth as its key mission and fundamental responsibility, and have worked hard to achieve that task since it was established in 1981," said Deputy Secretary-General of CCTF Zhu Xisheng.

"It will work with China Food Safety Newspaper (CFSN) to co-sponsor the Children's Food Safety and Health Fund, which aims to build up an institution for food safety and ensure all children accessible to safe foods in their daily life," Zhu added.

The past several years have seen a rise in the number of notorious food safety scandals in connection with children, further highlighting the urgency and importance of the task to protect the safety of children's foods.

Anemia is a condition which affects the level of red blood cells in the blood, and is commonly caused by iron deficiency, which can be introduced into the diet to aid patients.

Since China recently made an official announcement that all couples are now eligible to have two children, as stated at the recently concluded Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), it is anticipated that the public will pay more attention to the healthy growth of their offspring and the issue of safety over what their kids consume.

However, it is expected that governmental supervision cannot fundamentally solve the challenge without closer cooperation and participation of involved enterprises, the public and media, officials at the conference stated.

According to the CCTF, the Children's Food Safety and Health Fund will be officially rolled-out across the nation in June 2016. Social media groups will be invited to assume a supervisory role in the safeguarding of transparent information about children's food, and relevant enterprises are expected to further strengthen their self-discipline and take more social responsibilities in their profit-making activities.

Meanwhile, professionals and volunteers will be encouraged to conduct studies about the issue and enrich relevant data that might be beneficial for legislative departments to help them improve their laws and regulations.

Those in attendance at the event's opening ceremony included Vice-Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the 11th National People's Congress (NPC) Chen Zhili, who was also former president of the ACWF and former director-general of the CCTF; and, Zhao Donghua, vice-president and member of the Secretariat of the ACWF and deputy director-general of the CCTF.

(Source: CCTF/Translated and edited by Women of China)