MORE than 3,000 kinds of organic or green food will be displayed at the China Green Food 2008 Shanghai Expo from Friday.

Green food refers to food that is produced in a way that minimizes environmental harm and contains no agricultural chemicals.

China has established a series of standards for green food production. A product must pass an authentication process before it can be called green food and display the green food logo of a sun, leaves and a bud.

The four-day expo will be held in the Shanghai Agriculture Exhibition Hall. Altogether, 681 leading agricultural companies from 40 provinces and cities will show green food at the expo including grain, oil, fruit, vegetables, tea, poultry, livestock, eggs, dairy and seafood.

The expo will display achievements and facilitate trade. The first day of the expo is arranged specially for purchasers.

The expo organizer said food security will be especially stressed during the expo in a bid to maintain the reputation of green food and improve consumer confidence. A supervisory panel will be formed to check exhibited products on the scene and consumers can lodge complaints at a service desk in the hall.

“By promoting green food production, we have improved the quality of food production and increased the export of China’s agricultural food,” said Wang Jianping, deputy director of China Green Food Development Center. “Due to the global financial crisis, export-oriented companies should begin to compete for the domestic market. If a product is very high quality it will enjoy an important advantage.”

The expo has been held once every two years since 1990. It has been held in Shanghai since 2004.

According to the center, the output of green food reached 83 million tons last year in China. The sales volume exceeded 200 billion yuan (US$29 billion) last year and the export volume was nearly US$2.3 billion.

By the end of October, 17,647 products produced by 6,160 companies had passed the green-food authentication process.