China’s Two Sessions 2022: Proposals for Food Industry

China’s two sessions (the National People's Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference) of 2022 was held from Mar. 5 to Mar. 11. NPC members from all walks of life went to Beijing and raised their proposals in this extremely significant political meeting. This article summarizes the major proposals related to food industry, which may be the references for the upcoming policies.

The development of nutritious and healthy food

In the context of consumption upgrade, China’s food industry is undergoing a deep health-oriented reforming period Under such circumstance, both enterprises and consumers place more emphasis on nutritious and healthy food. What we call as nutritious and healthy food can be classified as health food requiring registration/filing and common prepackaged food having nutrition benefits.

In term of heath food subject to market access approval, Lu Qingguo, chairman of Chenguang Biotech, stated that the current evaluation work for health food registration has been proceeding slowly, causing the varieties and functions of health food unable to satisfy the consumer demands. Aiming at this issue, he proposed that¹:

• The competent authority should expedite the document and technical review for health food registration

• The government should optimize the review standard and procedure; unveil related documents such as “Catalogue of Functions Allowed for Health Food Claims” and “Technical Guideline for Evaluation and Testing of Health Food Functions” as soon as possible.

• The competent authority should establish the mechanism for evaluating the new raw materials and new functions of health food, which could facilitate the product innovation.

The long-term practice has proved the safety and effectiveness of Chinese medicine that can be served as both food and drug. Under this background, Li Huisen, CEO of Lee Kum Kee, suggested that more and more this kind of Chinese medicine should be included into the “(Filed) Health Food Raw Materials Directory”². Additionally, this could help expedite the market access approval of functional health food and satisfy consumers’ health demand more efficiently.

When it comes to common prepackaged food having nutrition benefits, Cai Jinchai, president of Panpan Food Group, proposed that the competent authorities should optimize the relevant regulations and standards, and strengthen the market supervision. The definition of nutritious health food with functions should be further clarified. In addition, the government can carry out level-to-level administration towards the products’ health claims³. For example, the product just needs to be filed if it has comparatively-low health claims.

Probiotic food is a booming sector in nutritious and healthy food industry. However, due to the lack of national food safety standard, the regulation of probiotic products is in chaos. For example, some enterprises may falsely indicate the strain content, or the product composition may even be unscientific. Another problem lies in that although probiotic is proved with health benefits for human, probiotic products cannot have functional claims because in most cases it is supervised as common food. In this case, Wang Junjin, chairman of JuneYao Group, suggested that the government should develop national food safety standard for probiotic food as soon as possible, and establish the regulation mechanism for functional food such as probiotic food, whose supervision intensity should be between common food and health food¹.

Addition of insects into China’s food catalogue

Yang Zhongqi, chief expert of Chinese academy of forestry sciences, raised the proposal of including edible insects into China’s food catalogue⁴. Earlier in May 2013, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) appealed people to consume insects. The first reason is that insects contain high levels of protein while have low fat, which can be a good nutrition source for human being. According to FAO report, the content and quality of protein in insects is similar as those in common meat, while the fiber content in insects is higher. Take caterpillar for example, its protein accounts for 53% of the dry weight, while the fat just represent 15%. Such ratio is better than common beef and pork. Secondly, insect diseases will not infect human being and livestock. Moreover, some insects can be fed on organic waste, which can contribute to low carbon emissions and sustainable development.

However, it seems that there will be still a long way to go for consumers to accept the consumption of insects. In China, people usually take it as local snack (like fried insects) and just small amount of people would like to try. In addition, insects have risk of allergy, which means consumers should be more careful when they have it for the first time.

Legislation exclusive for children food

At present, there is not a category named “children food” in China and no regulation or national food safety standards is designed exclusively for children food. However, with the increasing amount of children, consumers have higher quality requirements towards such products. NPC member Chu Jianmei suggested that the government should clarify the nutrition labeling, food additive requirements and product standards for children food by developing exclusive regulations or national food safety standards⁵.

Stabilize the balance between dairy purchase and sale

The supply and demand of raw milk greatly effects the raw milk price and the cost of final products. To create a sustainable market environment, Shi Yudong, R&D senior manager of Mengniu Group, proposed that bulk dairy commodities such as raw milk powder should be listed as stockpile and the authority should establish national storage centers, which could help maintain raw milk price⁶.

Additionally, Shi Yudong suggested to set up national dairy transaction centers to strengthen the influence of Chinese domestic dairy products on international dairy price and the discourse power of China in international dairy markets.

Reduction of carbon emission

The reduction of carbon emission in food industry became a hot topic in Two Sessions this year. Sun Baoguo, principal of Beijing Technology and Business University, raised a proposal related to the recycle of food-contact metal materials⁷. He suggested the government optimize the industrial standards regarding the regeneration of food-contact aluminum pop-top can.

Zhang Xuewu, chairman of Yanjin Puzi, proposed to popularize the use of food carbon label¹. That is, the emission of greenhouse gas for producing this food product can be marked on the label through quantitative index. By taking this measure, consumers can be guided to choose products which is more environmentally friendly, and the popularization of low-carbon food knowledge can be further strengthened.