On June 9, Mr. Wan Zaotian, COFCO vice president, attended an event marking 2015 World Accreditation Day as well as a ceremony to launch the “vision and action to jointly promote certification and accreditation service along ‘One Belt, One Road’” at Beijing International Conventional Center. He also delivered a speech at the sub-forum themed “registration and certification to ensure convenience of food/agricultural products trade and quality development” on behalf of the COFCO Group.
According to Mr. Wan Zaotian, with the acceleration of internationalization COFCO Group has become more and more aware of the importance of consolidating four major quality foundations, i.e. standard, measurement, examination & inspection and certification & accreditation to the promotion of enterprise’s quality management level and enhancement of international competitiveness. COFCO Group mainly adopts three measures to contribute to this initiative: Firstly, by becoming the first Chinese company to be a board member of the “Global Food Safety Initiative”, COFCO Group has been trying to popularize the notion of “once certified, accepted everywhere” so as to give full play to the role of certification and accreditation in reducing trading costs and facilitating international trade; secondly, besides conducting extensive business exchanges with international counterparts, COFCO Group plans to establish a three-tiered examination & inspection system so as to exercise rigorous control over the quality and safety tests of purchased materials and finished products; thirdly, the means of certification and accreditation will be actively utilized to promote the import and export trade.
State Councilor Wang Yong, who also attended the launch ceremony, delivered a speech, in which he emphasized that in order to make active contribution to the common prosperity of countries along “One Belt, One Road”, the means of certification and accreditation should be actively adopted and joint efforts should be made to deepen cooperation, enhance mutual trust and mutual recognition and reduce trade barriers. He noted that international cooperation regarding certification and accreditation, which is in the interest of all countries along “One Belt, One Road”, should be stepped up to serve the development of “One Belt, One Road” initiative as certification and accreditation are not only the fundamental work of quality development but also common international means of managing quality and safety and important tools of facilitating trade. He proposed that relevant parties should strengthen policy communications regarding such aspects as conformity assessment and technical measures, optimize regional environment for business operation and development, further mutual recognition of standard measurement, certification and accreditation, and examination and inspection results, improve multilateral cooperation mechanism, and expand room for exchange and cooperation. Zhi Shuping, Director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) hosted the launch ceremony.
World Accreditation Day, a global initiative jointly established in 2008 by the world’s two major international accreditation cooperative organizations – the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), aims to promote the extensive development of certification and accreditation around the world. Organized by China National Committee of Certification Accreditation (CNCA) to mark the eighth World Accreditation Day, the event was also attended by major leaders from China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, Administrations of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of various regions, GCC Standardization Organization, Belgium’s Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain, Denmark Accreditation Center, Mongolian Agency for Standardization and Metrology, Saudi Arabia’s Standards Bureau as well as Agricultural Counselors from embassies of various countries.
