CFDA Issues Tender Notices on Health Food Raw Materials and Health Claims

On 30 September 2017, Health Food Review Center of CFDA issued two tender notices: one about health food raw material directory and one about health function claims directory. The bid will be opened on 24 October. All qualified bidders are welcomed to participate in the tender.

Health food raw material directory

Apart from the subjects “Functional and safety literature analysis and database establishment of health food raw materials”, “Investigation of application safety and function of health food and establishment of database” and “Statistics on approved health food and research on the list of available items”, the document plans the research on the following 26 substances, grouped in five categories. 

Some of these raw materials have an extensive range of application in already approved health foods.

The deadline for the document "Health food raw materials directory research project special tender notice" is December 31, 2018, which means that 3-4 kinds of the above raw materials are expected to be listed in the "health food raw materials directory". Currently health food composed of raw materials listed in the health food raw materials directory are suitable for filing and don’t require registration. Thus the inclusion of the above substances in the “directory” would result in a reduced regulatory compliance for the products containing them, although for imported health food only nutrient supplements containing vitamins and minerals can apply for filling now. However, when added to the directory, no function claims but the ones contained in the approved health food registration/filing certificate will be allowed to be labeled.

Health function directory

Health food function claim directory research project special tender notice lists 10 health claim functions to be analyzed:

All belong to the current 27 legal health function claims in China. The research aims to refine the current evaluation criteria for these 10 claims, in order to establish a health function claims list substantiated by more scientific methodologies and more transparent procedures. The bidders are free to choose any of the aforementioned items, in the end no more than two of them will be selected for investigation.