Administrative Rules on the Review of Health Foods Advertisement

Advertising of health foods and food for special medical purposes will be restricted to labels and product manuals SAMR issued a notice detailing the first batch of fraudulent health food advertisements in 2019 According to expert projections over 100 health foods are expected to be registered in 2019

On May 8, 2019, in Jiangsu province, China Nutrition and Health Food Association (CNHFA) held a seminar about special food regulations. Some 50 regulators and industry experts were present, including speakers from SAMR infant formula office, FSMP registration office and Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment (CFSA).

During the seminar, general secretary of CNHFA and special food expert Liu Xuecong disclosed that administrative rules on the review of advertising of health foods and foods for special medical purposes are under formulation and expected to be released for public feedback in June. According to Liu, the ongoing clampdown on false advertising has already caused major casualties in the industry leading to the forced removal of hundreds of products from the market and the closure of numerous enterprise. The proposed changes to health food advertising rules would cause further disruption to the sector:

Advertising content will be confined to product labels and product manuals.
Only legal entities with a valid health food registration certificate will be allowed to advertise health foods. This will stop companies outsourcing their advertising to 3rd party advertising agencies etc. and greatly increase individual legal accountability with regard to advertising content and claims.

On the same day, in the afternoon, SAMR publicized the first batch of fraudulent ads in 2019 (30 cases violating the Advertising Law^[1]). The 3 most common reasons for health foods advertisements being found non-compliant are (read analysis on detailed food advertising regulations^[2] for more):

Directly state, infer or mislead consumers on health food efficacy in treating disease (pharmaceutical or therapeutic efficacy in pathological process)
Indication of epidemiological evidence related to treatment of a disease and/or the rate of success.
Use of medical terminology or terminology used for pharmaceutical or medical devices

Based on more stringent regulations and less cumbersome administration according to Liu “one of the goals of the government is issuing registration licenses to over 100 health foods this year".