“This regulatory system resulted in inconsistent law enforcement standards which were taken advantage of by unscrupulous merchants,” wrote Liza Mark, a partner in the Haynes and Boone law firm’s Shanghai office, on the company’s website. Food safety incidents continued to occur with regularity, including a well-publicized “gutter oil” scandal and widespread counterfeiting and intentional adulteration of food with often toxic chemicals. As recently as this past June, for example, authorities seized 800 tons of frozen smuggled meat, some of it more than 40 years old. “It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door,” according to Zhang Tao, an administration official, as reported in the China Daily.
These and other food safety incidents “highlighted the defects deeply rooted in the multiple and uncoordinated regulatory systems of the 2009 Food Safety Law,” reported Mark. The new amendments attempt to redress this by shifting primary authority and responsibility for food safety to the CFDA, with many inspection and compliance responsibilities pushed down to the provincial and local levels. CFDA will be the primary regulator; NHFPC will monitor and assess food safety risks and develop national standards; and AQSIQ will regulate imports and exports. “Although it will take some time, stakeholders can expect that the contradicting regulations previously issued by different regulators under the 2009 Food Safety Law will be methodically eliminated,” Mark predicts.
New Regulations
Over the past several months CFDA has issued new regulations for ordering food recalls. It has also proposed combining food distribution licenses with restaurant service licenses, for pre-approval of infant formula and “medical food” supplements, and for post-approval supervision of food manufacturers and food distributors. China’s AQSIQ has released regulations to guide local ports of entry on import inspections, including establishing an inspection categorization system by risk assessment and risk level. Legal obligations will fall on both domestic importers as well outside exporters. The measures also detail the conditions necessary for imposing and lifting temporary bans on food imports.
In keeping with China’s increasingly wired business sector, new measures are intended to regulate online food trading activities, including food distribution within the national borders. “Whenever an online trading platform discovers unsafe food, it is under an obligation to immediately cease the distribution and recall affected products based on a negative investigation result,” explains a whitepaper prepared by the Keller and Heckman LLP law firm. For the first time, food wholesalers are also required to create and maintain recordkeeping systems to capture detailed information including food name, specifications, production dates, sale quantity, shelf life, and buyers’ name and contact information. The records must be maintained for at least two years.
As mentioned, many inspection responsibilities are pushed down to provincial and local levels. Shanghai, for instance, has introduced rules requiring industry to be responsible for tracing safety information related to all food and edible agriculture products produced, distributed, and served by restaurant service providers within its administrative region. At the national level, food additive merchants must check suppliers’ permits and quality certificates and maintain detailed transaction records. CFDA will play a major role in coordinating provincial and local inspection activities while the companies themselves will be increasingly responsible for self-inspection and reporting results to local authorities.
When it comes to exporting to China, companies that are compliant with U.S. food requirements should generally meet Chinese requirements, says Craig W. Henry, PhD, vice president for global business development, Americas, Decernis LLC. “I would assume that U.S., Canadian, and European products should meet or even exceed China’s food safety requirements,” Dr. Henry says. “But now when you get into labeling, claims, and things like that, it gets to be more complicated and looked at case by case,” he tells Food Quality & Safety magazine.
Fearing Their Food
Chinese citizens have grown increasingly worried about the safety of their food. The percentage of those expressing serious concerns about food safety has nearly tripled since the country’s melamine scandal in 2008. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in China in April and May 2015, a full 71 percent of adults says food safety is a serious problem, with roughly one-third (32 percent) calling it a “very big” problem, up 20 percentage points from 12 percent in 2008. Fewer than half (43 percent) think the situation will improve over the next five years, with 27 percent believing it will get worse and 22 percent expecting it to remain unchanged.
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