Two new national key laboratories focusing on cereals, fruit and vegetable quarantines and inspections -- established by Taiyuan Customs, the provincial customs department of North China's Shanxi province -- recently passed inspection and acceptance by the General Administration of Customs.

To date, Taiyuan Customs has built five national key laboratories with quarantine and inspection operations. These cover the areas of food, seafood, drugs, drinking water, health foods, food additives, sanitation and disinfection products and cosmetics, environmental samples, mineral products, metal materials, as well as animal and plant diseases and epidemics. 

Taiyuan Customs currently has 6,762 projects with qualification certifications, making it the testing agency with the most qualification certification projects in Shanxi. 

The laboratories provide faster technical support for national quarantine supervision of imports and exports. They offer more authoritative and convenient technical services to domestic market regulatory agencies, merchants and consumers. 

Last year, Taiyuan Customs tested 18,900 batches of food and drug products, as well as import and export enterprises, an increase of 38 percent year-on-year.