Officials from China’s Ministry of Agriculture have offered reassurances about the safety of genetically-modified food.

Wu Kongming, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that China’s safety evaluation system on GM crops is the world’s strictest in terms of technical standards and procedures.

For genetically modified crops, China currently only allows the plantation of insect-resistant cotton and anti-viral papaya for commercial purposes.

China is one of the few countries in the world whose GM food safety evaluation process involves both the products themselves and the technological standard.

“Only products that have passed a safety evaluation can enter the market. China has adopted a phased evaluation system, which starts in the laboratory, and then to the planting fields, where we do small-scale experiments, then large-scale production experiments, before we issue a security certificate,” Wu said.

“We are the only country in the world that implements this assessment system.”