THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the National Health Commission jointly issued a notice on food safety and nutrition management in schools, requiring the school principals to have meals together with the students. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

The issuance of the provision is timely and also necessary, given that a recent food safety problem in a middle school in Chengdu, Sichuan province, aroused grave public concerns. Considering food safety in schools concerns kids' health and even their lives, many people have suggested that primary and middle schools in China should follow the practice of their counterparts in developed countries, and school principals and students should have their meals together in the same canteens. The document is the authorities' positive response to such a proposal.

That school principals now have to eat meals together with students will put them in the same food safety environment as students. This will encourage them to attach greater importance to food safety and hygiene conditions.

If strictly implemented, such a practice will boost food safety awareness and the sense of responsibility among school principals, prompting them to take more effective measures to ensure food safety.

There are some who argue that the reason why such a practice is effective in schools in Western countries is that the schools and their canteens set up a "supervising and supervised" relationship, and their interests are not interlinked.

However, in China, some schools and their canteens have more complicated interest relations, which, in the absence of viable support measures, will possibly make the proposed meal-sharing practice less effective or not viable at all.

Such worries are not completely unreasonable. Given that most of school canteens are run by the schools themselves or introduced based on market rules, they usually lack supervision from other parties besides supervision from school authorities, which, however, can be offset by interest swaps.

So, the new requirement by the authorities should not only increase the pressure on school principals, but also cut the improper interest links between schools and canteens so that the two can return to the normal "supervising and supervised" relations and food safety in schools can be fundamentally ensured.