Take home:
- Goat infant formula manufacturers in China are facing more stringent supervision on both a national and provincial level.
- Cross contamination and insufficient disinfection during processing were the major problems highlighted during a recent field inspection of 6 Chinese goat infant formula powder production plants.
In late 2015, the CFDA published several goat milk powder non-compliance notices. One of the major problems identified was that infant formula products specified as goat milk powders were actually blended with bovine whey powder, without any indication of the ratios of these ingredients, which poses obvious risks to sensitive populations and undermines consumer rights.
In 2016, the authority tightened up supervision on goat milk products. The new infant formula recipe registration policy demands mandatory labeling of all raw materials that consist of two or more animal derived ingredients. Under new requirements the “proportion of each animal derived raw material should be clearly marked”. Several notices were issued on implementation of more stringent inspection, such as “Area Governance on Infant Formula Goat Milk Powder” by CFDA. Shanxi FDA (the most significant goat milk production region in China) released “Governance on Goat Milk Powder Enterprise of Shanxi Province”. Among 88 approved infant formula powder production licenses, there are 20 goat infant formula enterprises, 17 of which are located in Shanxi Province.
On November 28th, Weinan FDA (Weinan is a city in Shanxi Province) released a notice on the inspection results of 6 goat infant formula production plants. The inspection result has again raised public attention on the safety of goat milk powder. All 6 manufacturers were shown to have hygiene problems related to cross contamination and disinfection.
Most significant problems:
- Lack of complete and effective disinfection measures;
- Lack of effective measures to prevent cross contamination between different workshops;
- Recording of information related to disinfection, cleaning, testing, or processing are incomplete
- Lack of adequate disinfectant equipment
- Lack of a complete food safety personnel management system and training project.
Goat milk represents just a small portion of the total infant formula market in China. Most manufacturers are SMEs with relatively inferior technical capacities. The new regulatory requirements represent a significant increase in market access requirements and we can expect these new measures to force lower capacity manufacturers out of the market.
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