Take home:
- The revised draft of the Food Safety Law Implementation Rules was submitted to the central government for finalization and could be implemented by early 2017.
- The implementation rules further stipulates supervision on special food raw material management, sale and advertisement, e-commerce food trade, food safety standards and the regulation of food additives in the catering sector.
On 19th October, the central government released the revised draft of Implementation Rules of Food Safety Law (hereafter called Rules) for public consultation. The consultation deadline is the 19th of November, 2016.
The new Food Safety Law came into effect last October and since then a series of measures and rules have been issued gradually. It has been more than 10 months since the first draft of these implementation rules were released last December (see CL news on 11, Dec. 2015). The revised draft contains 10 chapters and 208 articles. The most significant articles in the implementation rules detail the regulation and administration of high risk food categories (infant formula, FSMPs, health foods).
Standards
Health food, food for special medical purpose, infant formula, food additive, food related products (food packaging, detergents), novel food raw material and testing method relating to food safety are national standards which must be implemented in a uniform and consistent fashion throughout all of China’s provinces. Enterprises standards used internally do not need to be verified and authorized by competent authorities, but should be transparent and open to public scrutiny. Additionally, competent authorities are required to establish a food additive application system for the catering sector.
Traceability
The Rules emphasize the necessity of building a food safety traceability system. In addition to the general recording obligations set forth for general food manufacturers, manufacturers of high risk food like health food, FSMPs, infant formulas, meat, dairy, plant oil and alcohol products should build a dedicated electronic traceability system.
Recall
The Rules requires food operators to put in place a reliable system to recall food that may present a significant or serious risk to the consumer or user of the product. The recall can be classified into three levels according to the extent of risk and emergency.
Special Food
The Rules provides some supplemental requirements for raw material management, sale, advertisement and associated registration requirements for food products bearing functional efficacy claims. Registration of products classified as special foods will be subject to a registration and testing fee. In future, special foods should be sold in specific areas of shops designated based on the specific food/claim category. Inspection of all special food will also be more stringent and all inspection results will be published to the public. Moreover, regarding OEM of special food, article 78 clarifies that in cases where one manufacturer uses the same product formula for different brands (health food, FSMP and infant formula) their registration certificate will be canceled.
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