China’s Food Additive National Food Safety Standard System

The 2009 version of China’s Food Safety Law introduced the concept of National Food Safety Standard (NFSS) for the first time, aiming at building a unified and comprehensive standard system to regulate foods in China. This type of standard is compulsory and implemented at the national level. The NFSS system covers various aspects related to food, including food products, food additives, contaminants in foods, food contact materials, pesticide residue, etc. Meanwhile, NFSS can be classified into product standard, specification standard, labeling standard, testing standard, etc. The easiest wat to differentiate between a NFSS from another compulsory or local/industry standard is that the name of every NFSS contains the term “National Food Safety Standard”, such as GB 2760-2014 National Food Safety Standard for Uses of Food Additives. China NHFPC is the major department responsible for managing, formulating and publishing NFSS.