China Imported Honey Compliance Failure Data (July 2015- June 2016)

It has been one year since AQSIQ started to release monthly import food blacklist since July of 2015. Here is a brief overview about the import honey.

Incompliance data

The following figure shows the volume and country distribution of rejected honey. Generally, about 41% of unqualified honey came from Kyrgyzstan, Brazil and New Zealand accounted for 15% and 9% of total unqualified honey volume respectively.

• From July 2015 to June 2016, a total of 94 batches amounting to 115,502 kilograms of honey were rejected by Chinese CIQs.
• Honey was exported from 14 countries and 2 regions (Hong Kong and Taiwan).
• The unqualified rate accounts for about 4% of the total import volume.
• The unqualified volume of honey has grown by 96% from 40 batches amounting to 39,057 kilograms in the second half year of 2015 to 54 batches amounting to 76,445 kilograms in the first half year of 2016.

Figure Rejected Honey Volume by Countries and Rejected Reasons by Import Batches

Microbiological safety issues and veterinary medicine residue levels are the most frequent compliance problem. Compliance failures are associated with product divergence from Chinese reference standard including the Chinese honey standard, label standard, and lack of some documentation for border clearance.

Lack of certification or lack of supporting quality documentation

The AQSIQ request a series of documents for inspection clearance at borders. Take the export certificate as an example; the AQSIQ demands export certificates issued by competent authority of exporting country, for example an export certificate from Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) for Canadian honey exporters and Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) for New Zealand honey exporters to prove that the honey is produced by registered manufacturers without any food additives.

Products Outside of Regulated Scope

Honey comb cannot be imported due to lack of relevant standards. Among all the rejected batches, 4 batches of honey combs were rejected due to a lack of a corresponding quality standard. In China, all food circulating within the market should comply with corresponding product standards. The scope of current honey standards are limited to natural honey without any food additives or foreign objects, which means the honey standard does not apply to product containing both honey and honey comb. Additionally, in terms of inspection and quarantine, only honey and royal jelly have AQSIQ import approval.