Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Institute of Nutrition and Health of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Xiumei Liu is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Institute of Nutrition and Health and the former Chief Scientist of Food Safety at the CDC.
Following her graduation from the Department of Medicine, Shanghai First Medical College (Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University) in 1976, she has conducted research in food safety with the National Institutes of Health, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the National Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine and the National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, China CDC, as well as the National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA). Her research primarily concerns the etymology and pathogen of foodborne diseases, food safety risk monitoring and prevention and control system construction, foodborne pathogenic bacteria testing methods and standardization research and food microbiological risk assessment.
Professor Liu has presided over a number of key food safety projects, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the "Tenth Five-Year Plan", scientific and technological support for the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" and the "Social Welfare Fund," and guided the risk assessment of important foodborne pathogenic bacteria in high-risk foods. She also presided over the establishment and revision of several national food safety standards, including “Pathogenic Bacteria Limits in Foods” (GB 29921), “Food Microbiology Examination, General Principles” (GB 4789.1), “Quick Frozen Flour and Rice Products” (GB 19295) and the “Code of Hygienic Practices on Quick-frozen Food Production and Management” (GB 31646).
She is currently an advisory member of the National Food Safety Standards Review Committee, an advisory member of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Expert Committee, Honorary Vice President of the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology (CIFST) and Chair of the CIFST’s Food Safety and Standard Technology Branch. As the head of the Chinese delegation and an expert advisor for Codex Committee on Food Hygiene meetings from 1999 to 2009, Professor Liu chaired the Codex Committee on Food Additives Secretariat in China from 2006 to 2016. She has actively participated in Codex Alimentarius and the food safety work of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, and was successively appointed as an expert of the FAO/WHO Food Microbial Risk Assessment Committee (JEMRA) (participated in the risk assessment of Salmonella in poultry meat and Listeria monocytogenesis in ready-to-eat food).
Additional activities include: Expert of the WHO Foodborne Disease Burden of Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG); member of the International Commission of Microbiological Specification in Foods (ICMSF) (Chairman of the Chinese Sub-commission); member of the Board of Directors of AOAC International (First President of the China Section); Co-chair of the Food Safety Expert Committee of the International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST); Fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology (IAFoST); Chair of the Chinese Committee of the International Food Protection Association (IAFP).