Healthy food and sound air quality during the Games are vitally important. Now the Games are on a one year countdown it has become deadly serious.

Wang Wei, an executive vice president of the Beijing organizing committee and seen in our illustration, told a press conference, ‘Our country and the Beijing municipal government are taking the food safety issue very seriously, especially for the Olympics. Actually, Beijing has hosted a lot of big events and there have been no problems regarding food safety in these events.’

According to organizing committee action guidelines state-of-the-art technologies such as global positioning satellite systems will be used to help track food during the production and distribution process.

All food entering the Olympic Village will carry a logistics code so to enable tracking.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine yesterday announced similar measures. Also at the press conference, the organizing committee spelled out contingency plans for improving air quality during the Games.

Wang Wei said, ‘Air quality is not only a matter for Beijing’s image, but also a matter concerning the health of athletes and the general public. In order to secure clean air during the Games, we will unveil some contingency plans and some of them will be rehearsed during the upcoming test events.’

In order to test the venues and organizing systems, Beijing will trial more than 40 test events before the opening of the Games.

Last November, Beijing imposed a six-day ban on at least 490,000 government vehicles and advised private drivers to take buses to make way for a summit meeting of Chinese and African leaders. Traffic was surprisingly smooth even in the busiest areas during the week and the air quality evaluated was much better.

Wang Wei said, ‘If we want to get cars off the roads, we want people to do it willingly. It is not only for the traffic conditions, but also for improving the air quality. We want to know the effects of those measures. During the test events, we will also establish some monitoring stations around the venues to supervise air quality.’

Acknowledging some public concern about the Games, BOCOG said it welcomed media reports that were objective, fair and comprehensive, but opposed the ‘politicization of the Olympics’.

The officials also played down the public and media’s high expectations of China’s athletes at the Games.

Wang Wei said, ‘As stated by our sports officials, China’s sports strength is still in the second tier of the medal tally. The unexpected is what makes the Olympics so appealing and exciting. We want to offer a fair stage for athletes from all over to perform well.’
Source: China Daily