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Standards Regulating Chinese Alcoholic Beverage Industry Earmarked For Optimization

According to statistics, alcoholic beverage enterprises earned 978.063 billion RMB of sales revenue and 109.447 billion RMB of profit in 2016, with year-on-year growth of 6.27% and 7.22% respectively. As one of the most profitable sectors of the Chinese food industry, quality and safety are always key public concerns.  

Takehome:

  • Data generated from a 2016 industry spot check campaign conducted in 2016 on alcoholic products circulating in the Chinese market show a qualification rate of 95.5%.
  • The Chinese government is paying great attention to the safety of alcohol products which will involve optimization of 12 important Chinese national standards in 2017 and beyond.

According to statistics, alcoholic beverage enterprises earned 978.063 billion RMB of sales revenue and 109.447 billion RMB of profit in 2016, with year-on-year growth of 6.27% and 7.22% respectively. As one of the most profitable sectors of the Chinese food industry, quality and safety are always key public concerns. In 2016, 12702 batches of liquor products were sampled, 575 batches were deemed unqualified (incompliant with Chinese national standards) representing an overall qualification rate of 95.5%. Compared to the qualification rate of dairy products, quick frozen products and egg products which are all higher than 99%, there is still significant room for improvement in China’s liquor industry.

Song Quanhou, vice president of China National Research institute of Food and Fermentation Industries, highlighted 6 prominent problems in supervision, which are:

  1. Food labels
  2. Deviation of labeled alcohol content with tested concentration
  3. Excessive solid content concentration and/or excessive microbial contamination
  4. Illegal use of sweeteners such as sodium cyclamate, saccharin sodium and acesulfame to enhance wine’s taste
  5. Contamination with toxins such as Cyanide;
  6. Contamination with acid esters

By the end of 2015, there were 156 standards designed to regulate the alcoholic beverage industry. The system of standards developed to administrate and regulate alcoholic products will be further improved in 2017.

Song Shuyu, vice president and secretary general of China Alcoholic Drinks Association, introduced that there are 12 regulations in progress, including:

  • revision of category standard for alcoholic beverages
  • revision of spirits and vintage standard
  • formulation of traceability standard for spirits product (Chinese Baijiu)
  • formulation of standard for monascus rice wine
  • Formulation of standard for chateau wine and etc.

The standard for spirits (Chinese Baijiu), vintage standard, traceability and monascus rice wine will be released this year. Besides the important standards listed above an admittance standard system, standard sample, testing standard and label standard system will be established for the Chinese spirits and vintage sector. Guideline for Chinese Spirits Traceability Technology will also be released over the next several months. 

Improvement in the testing standards used in China’s wine industry is also a key goal of policymakers and it is hoped that the success and progress already realized in China’s beer sector can be duplicated, where standards are already aligned with international best practices and technical capacities even surpass those of some well-developed regions globally.

Reference link:

http://www.cfda.com.cn/NewsDetail.aspx?id=101198

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