IN A country reeling from a series of grim food scandals, it was hardly surprising to see the news of tainted Irish pork and bacon splashed all over the front pages of the newspapers, and top of many news bulletins.

On its website, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) said 2,047 tonnes of Irish pork products, imported since September 1st, would be recalled from the market and returned to Ireland.

Soon afterwards, some Belgian chocolates, a brandy from Italy and a seasoning sauce from the UK joined the codex.

Finally, some bad news about quality control from a country other than China - that must have been the feeling among the food-safety community in China after a year of appalling food scandals, chief among them the tainting of baby-milk formula with melamine.

While a shift in focus from China's woes was welcome, the country has been trying to do something about its own food safety issues and last week China launched a four-month safety drive, which includes inspections at food and additive manufacturers across the country to track down and stamp out the use of excessive or illegal chemicals in food.

Six children died and a further 294,000 were sickened this year from drinking milk contaminated with melamine. The scandal erupted in September and caused global concern. A host of countries around the world banned or recalled China-made dairy products, starting with milk and milk powder, but extending into chocolate and sweets.

The chemical was added to watered-down milk by unscrupulous milk suppliers to give it the appearance of high protein levels.

The damage to China's food exports was extreme, not something you need at a time when the global financial crisis is already eating into the amount of goods you can sell abroad.

The health ministry said its newest drive would be conducted in three phases, with companies first asked to conduct internal checks, followed by government examinations of producers of meat, dairy and other protein-rich products that are considered "high risk".

The Beijing government has also been careful about being transparent in the campaign. There were whispers of a cover-up to make sure the scandal did not break ahead of the Olympics. These kind of rumours in some ways are more damaging because they undermine the credibility of the authorities.

With this in mind, the Chinese authorities have been forthright, even though the country's watchdogs faces a huge job in investigating the food industry. The authorities say the investigation will focus on products made by small food factories as they are often under-supervised. Among China's 500,000 food-processing firms, 70 per cent employ less than 10 employees.

Among the earliest measures arising from the safety drive is the banning of 17 substances, some commonly used as disinfectants or insecticides, as food additives. Substances on a list published by the health ministry include boric acid, a chemical used as an insecticide or flame retardant that is known to be added to noodles or the skin of dumplings.

The health ministry is also cracking down on formaldehyde, which is applied to dried seafood to improve its appearance, or used as a disinfectant.

The broader economic question is what the food safety scandal means for the "Made in China" brand. Most analysts believe that the harsh irony of events like the milk formula scandal is that long-term production methods improve, safety standards are raised and the overall situation gets better. Something similar happened with Irish butter in the early days of exporting to the UK.

It was with great relief that the commerce ministry in Beijing was able to report in recent weeks that it had exported its first batch of cooked chicken to the EU after a six-year ban was lifted. Shandong Zhucheng Foreign Trade shipped 60 tonnes of cooked chicken to Belgium.

While the EU lifted the ban, imposed in 2002 because of contamination with antibiotics, only nine companies, all in Shandong province, won the approval to export.

The Shanghaiist website wrote a rather tongue-in-cheek blog entry about the news about Irish pork fiasco. "Finally some good news that will make anyone in China rest assured that the food on our table is safe . . . After banning soy sauce and wasabi imported from three Japanese producers . . . AQSIQ has now withheld about 312 tonnes of Irish pork across the country, on global concerns that pork from Ireland contain potentially harmful levels of the cancer-causing agent dioxin," it wrote. "This latest move by AQSIQ will hurt the Irish pork industry big time as China is a huge pork-consuming nation. Anyhow, it's been a while since the blue-ear disease struck, so eat Chinese pork, y'all."