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Supervision Framework of Import Food under the Food Safety Law

With dramatically increasing import food volume, AQSIQ and CFDA together build a new import food supervision framework to increase import clearance efficiency and ensure food safety.

Takehome:

  • The new Food Safety Law built a new import food supervision framework sharing more responsibility to stakeholders throughout the food supply chain.
  • The Chinese government will encourage more self-compliance to overseas food manufacturers to increase clearance efficiency

With dramatically increasing import food volume, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China (AQSIQ) as the key inspection and quarantine authority is facing with extremely heavy inspection and quarantine work for import food. Customs clearance efficiency of imported food at the Chinese border is far lower than the global average level. During the 2016 CRAC, Mr. Jiao Yang, the director of Standard & Regulation Center of AQSIQ who has entirely participated in the formulation and revision of new Food Safety Law, was invited to introduce the imported food supervision framework and future management trend by AQSIQ.

Responsibility Clarification

Previously, the Chinese government has played the role of food safety guarantor to inspect and offer certificates to ensure food safety every batch of product. Under the new Food Safety Law, the authority wants to place food safety responsibility to stakeholders throughout the whole import food supply chain rather than merely the supervision authority. An initial supervision framework for import food is showed as below. The whole import procedure will be divided into three stages before/ during/ after the import. The stakeholders covering the exporting governments, overseas manufacturers and exporters, Chinese governments and importers.

                      Figure 1. Import Food Supervision Framework

Chinese government started to build food safety management audit system on exporting government to assess exporting government’s food safety management system and establish inspection and quarantine requirements for that country. It also requires governments of exporting countries should undertake the responsibility to make their exporting food to comply with Chinese regulations by providing regulatory, technical or economic support.

As for manufacturer’s responsibility, during the year of 2015 and 2016, pre-market approval for particular food categories, such as the overseas manufacturer registration, and special food registration for infant formula, health food and food for special medical purpose have been implemented gradually. Consequently, Chinese Inspection and Quarantine (CIQ) authorities will be able to pay more efforts to risk monitoring, and they have introduced the risk assessment and risk alert response system by now. In next step, the authority will pay attention to post-market management such as risk communication, and establishment of comprehensive product traceability and recall system.

Encouraging Self-inspection of Compliance

In spite of compulsory requirements, a series of incentive measures is under drafting by Chinese Inspection and Quarantine (CIQ) to encourage exporters and importers to carry out self-inspection of compliance and accelerate customs clearance, such as “voluntary recognition system of excellent importers”, “overseas pre-inspection system of imported food”, and “third party inspection certification recognition system for imported food”. Pre-inspection will be conducted by qualified official or third-party institutions and more clearance convenience will be given to those well-performed enterprises.

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