Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, says that Hong Kong SAR will adopt new measures to ensure food safety in the region.

The measures include regulating importers' acquisition of poultry and egg products through legislation; requiring registration of the importers of fresh fish and fish-related products; revising the relevant laws to give more powers to the food and health departments to supervise the food market; and to make use of RFID to keep track of the food resources.

The government says that to be economically viable, RFID technology should be deployed across the entire supply chain, right from the source where goods and products are manufactured, to storage, picking and packaging, through to logistics, crossborder transportation and shipment, and all the way to inventory control and retail.

With RFID tagged pallets and carton boxes, the goods in each container can be registered through the RFID reading devices. With the container itself being tagged with RFID devices, goods in transit between suppliers and overseas destinations could be monitored at all times.

The Centre of Food Safety of Hong Kong SAR recently conducted a spot check on 350 pieces of fresh fruit sold at supermarkets, street stalls and fruit shop and reported that all of them are fine. With RFID, the authorities can now better track from where certain produce originates, which will help them eliminate goods in the event of a health crisis.