In recent years, countries such as the EU, the United States, and Japan have imposed stricter testing requirements for agricultural and veterinary drug residues in casings. Inspection and quarantine authorities across Jiangsu have actively implemented a series of countermeasures and continued to strengthen and enforce management, ensuring that casing exports maintain a positive development trend with stable product quality and a steady increase in quantity.

1. Strengthening Collaborative Management

Inspection and quarantine authorities across regions have taken the initiative to inform and communicate with local agricultural and animal husbandry departments about the testing and monitoring of veterinary drug residues in export animal-derived food products. This has promoted the management of livestock and veterinary drug authorities over the production and sales of prohibited veterinary drugs at their sources, intensified the investigation and punishment of prohibited veterinary drugs, enhanced the hygiene awareness of farmers, and standardized the medication management of farmers and animal farms.

2. Tightening Raw Material Procurement

Most pork casing production and processing enterprises have established raw material procurement bases. They evaluate suppliers' hygiene conditions, supply capacity, and production systems to identify qualified raw material suppliers. The relatively stable source of casing processing raw materials facilitates the monitoring of drug residues.

3. Enhancing Process Supervision

Based on daily inspection and quarantine of export casing production enterprises, supervisory inspections of the production and processing processes have been carried out to enhance personnel hygiene awareness, ensure the hygiene of casing production and processing environments, eliminate the addition and use of unknown chemical substances, and prevent secondary drug contamination during casing production and processing.

4. Scientific Monitoring

Through preliminary investigations and risk analyses by working groups, key monitoring items for drug residues have been scientifically determined. Raw material enterprises are accepted on a batch basis, and testing for agricultural and veterinary drug residues such as chloramphenicol and nitrofurans in export casing raw materials has been strengthened to ensure that unqualified casings are not used in production and processing. Appropriate sampling and testing are conducted before product export to verify the safety and hygiene quality of export casings.

Challenges and Recommendations

However, drug residues remain the main obstacle affecting casing exports. Food safety is a systematic project. Casing production involves various links such as animal breeding, slaughtering, processing, and transportation. In the processing link, due to the relative isolation of processing sites with different hygiene requirements and effective control of hygiene prevention measures, the possibility of secondary drug contamination in casings is low. The key stage for drug residues in casings lies in animal breeding. Currently, China's scattered animal breeding model will continue to exist for some time, and drug residues in casing raw materials will remain a major hidden risk for export casing inspection and quarantine in the future. To address this, inspection and quarantine authorities propose the following recommendations:

a. Collaborative Management with Clear Responsibilities

Food safety is a systematic project, and drug residues in casings also involve animal breeding, slaughtering, transportation, and processing. Therefore, we must collaborate with relevant functional departments such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Health to strengthen management of drug production, sales, and use at the source. A comprehensive survey of currently used agricultural and veterinary drugs should be conducted, followed by scientific analysis to establish and improve China's agricultural and veterinary drug residue monitoring system.

b. Targeted Research and Investigation

Local authorities should conduct in-depth on-site investigations to understand which drugs are used in domestic and foreign animal breeding. Through scientific analysis, identify which drugs cause drug residue technical barriers to find breakthroughs for key monitoring in import-export casing inspection and quarantine, thereby improving the effectiveness of inspection and quarantine.

c. Rigorous Supervision and Scientific Management

Strengthen supervision to guide enterprises in establishing and improving quality self-control systems, implement full-process labeling from raw materials to finished products, and ensure that original records of raw materials and finished products correspond. Guide enterprises to establish and improve self-inspection and self-control systems, enhance drug residue testing capabilities, and resolutely prohibit the processing and export of raw materials with unclear sources or unqualified drug residue tests. At the same time, guide enterprises to establish Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, improve quality traceability systems, and assist enterprises in establishing a complete set of management files covering raw material breeding, procurement, storage, processing, and finished product inspection. Provide human resource training to enhance safety and hygiene awareness, standardize production medication, incorporate credit systems into enterprise supervision and management, and improve the ability to supervise the entire production process.

d. Enhanced Early Warning and Communication

Establish an information exchange platform and regularly release updates in the form of bulletins. Implement a technical resource sharing platform to gradually form a scientific research and cooperation mechanism for key control technologies of casing safety and hygiene. Strengthen technical exchanges with foreign countries, improve domestic testing standards for agricultural chemical residues, and align with international standards.