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China Food Safety Sampling Plan 2019

In 2019 SAMR intends to intensify its post-market sampling and testing efforts and will focus on high-risk food products, such as special dietary food, FSMP and infant formula food. Noncompliant use of additives, microbial contamination, and unqualified pesticide residues were food safety weak points identified during the 2018 national sampling and inspection campaign. These areas will be subject to priority treatment in 2019.

According to an SAMR announcement [1] released on Feb. 1, in 2019 China SAMR plans to carry out a national sampling inspection on 34 food types, including infant formula products, dairy products, meat products, beverage, alcoholic drinks, food for special dietary purposes, health food, bee products, edible agricultural products, etc., covering 150 categories and 259 specific varieties. Altogether 1 million batches of products will be inspected.

Working Principles and Tasks

  • Large wholesale markets, food manufacturing enterprises and large catering enterprises, especially enterprises with large market share, large wholesale markets, and enterprises that have previously failed to pass inspection.

  • Increase the sampling frequency of high-risk food or products with high disqualification rate.

High-risk food [2]edible oil products, meat products, dairy products, bottled water, Chinese spirits, edible raw aquatic product, cooked fishery food, honey, foods for special dietary purposes, FSMP and infant formula food
Previously disqualified food
(* based on the national food sample inspection result in 2018)
Instant food (qualified rate: 92.3%)
Vegetable (93.7%)
Catering food (93.9%)
Roasted seeds and nuts (96.4%)
Starch and starch products (94.8%)
*compared to the average qualified rate of 97.6% in Q3, 2018 [3]
  • Inspection schedule:

    • Domestic and imported infant formula milk powder will be sampled by SAMR monthly.

    • Edible agricultural products, online food, and imported food will be sampled by SAMR quarterly.

    • Edible agricultural food like vegetable, fruit, meat, seafood, and eggs will also be sampled by local authorities weekly.

  • A certain amount of online food and imported food will be inspected, such as edible oil, dairy products, beverage, wine products, biscuits, roasted seeds and nuts.

  • Intensify efforts on the inspection of pesticide residue, heavy metal residue, biological toxin contamination, etc.

  • The inspection scope will be expanded, covering both cities and rural areas. All elements in product lifecycle and supply chain will be included.

  • The food safety sampling inspection result will be publicized regularly.

Editor's Notes

As revealed by the food safety sampling inspection result, the overall qualified rate reached 97.5% in 2018. Among all the food products, the qualified rate of meat, eggs and dairy products were higher than others.

What should enterprises pay attention to? The detailed implementation rules for 2019 are still being finalized. Attached is the 2018 version [4].

Main noncompliant issues found during the national inspection 2018:

CauseProportion of noncompliant casesYOY Growth
Noncompliant use of additives (out of scope or excessive use)30.0%-0.1%
Microbial contamination25.3%-1.3%
Unqualified pesticide residue amount21.6%+6.6%
Unqualified quality10.1%-3.9%
Heavy metal contamination3.9%+0.6%

(Source: SMAR, Q1, 2018 [5])

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