The requirement to register infant formula is articulated within China’s new Food Safety Law which was issued on 24 Apr and will come into effect soon (1 Oct 2015). The wording in the food safety law “the formulations of infant formula should be registered with CFDA and companies should provide formula R&D report and other supporting documents outlining the scientific soundness and safety of the formula” is somewhat vague and does not specify any requirement for imported infant formula registration.
Recently, CFDA issued a draft of “Administration Measures for Registration of Infant Formula Formulations” for public consultation (see CL food news on 2 Sep 2015) which only targets the domestic sector. However it has been confirmed by both Jiao Yang from AQSIQ and Mr. Chen Jianliang from Shanghai CIQ at REACH24H Food Summit that imported IF products will be regulated in a similar fashion as outlined in the September 2nd draft.
The two officials revealed that AQSIQ is engaged in ongoing discussions with CFDA on assigning regulatory responsibility for imported IF formulation registration. Thankfully stakeholders won’t have too long to wait to find out the final version of this regulation as the FSL will take effect very soon and requires these new rules to be finalized.
During the summit, Mr.Jiao from AQSIQ also clarified that under the new FSL China will allow producing infant formula by OEM but would still ban subpackaging of infant formula.
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