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Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, after attending a radio programme this morning (August 12):
Reporter: (On clean-up progress of plastic pellets and legislation on nutrition labeling of infant formula)
Secretary for Food and Health: Regarding the plastic pellets, as I have said, the amount of plastic pellets recovered from the various beaches in Hong Kong has fallen from daily average of 1 to 2 tonnes to a few hundred kilogrammes. I personally went to Tung O Beach yesterday to have an inspection and found that the amount of plastic pellets left is still significant. However, it is much less than the amount as reported last week. With the stepping up of cleansing initiatives and effort by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, the Civil Aid Service volunteers, the environmental groups and volunteers from the public, I hope the cleansing operation would be largely completed in the coming one to two weeks. Following this, I hope the public can regain their confidence in eating sea fishes.
As to the second question, it would of course be very desirable for us to have the legislation governing the nutrition requirements of all infant and baby formulae as soon as possible. On this, I would assure the public that the Government will spare no effort in speeding up the legislative initiative to ensure that there will be a legislation in place soon to control the nutrition requirements for all these baby formulae. Before the legislation can come into effect, we will use a code of practice to promote firstly the practice of feeding the babies with breast milk; and secondly the control of nutrition requirements as well as the labeling of infant formulae.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Sunday, August 12, 2012
Issued at HKT 12:07
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