From January to March 2022, the European Union, United States, Japan, South Korea and Canada notified 506 batches of China exported food products, involving 29 categories. Using the food safety sampling inspection query and analysis system that FoodMate independently developed, this article summarized the sampling inspection situation of alert notifications against China in the first quarter of 2022, and analyzed the products of the European Union, United States, Japan, South Korea and Canada which had the most alerts for Chinese food products as the reference of the industry.
1、Overview of alert notifications statistics against China
According to statistics, from January to March 2022, the United States notified the largest number of early-warning products to China (246 batches), followed by South Korea. See Figure 1 for the detailed number of products.
Figure 1. Statistics on the number and proportion of alerting products notified to China in the first quarter of 2022
The top three categories were food-related products, vegetables and vegetable products, aquatic and aquatic products, accounting for 18.77%, 17.98% and 13.44% of the total, respectively. The proportion of each food category is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Proportion of China alerted products by category in the first quarter of 2022
The main reasons for the unqualified products are unqualified quality parameters, excessive pesticide residues and non-compliant labels. The proportion of non-conforming items is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Proportion of unqualified items of alerted food products from China in the first quarter of 2022
2. alert notification from USA
A total of 246 batches of products, involving 16 categories, have been rejected and automatically detained by the United States. Vegetables and their products, aquatic products and their products and baked food ranked the top three in the number of notifications, accounting for 22.76%, 17.07% and 16.26% of the total, with 56 batches, 42 batches and 40 batches respectively.
The main reasons for the unqualified products in the US alerts against China are illegal addition, non-compliant labeling and excessive pesticide residues.
3. alert notification from South Korea
South Korea has issued 93 batches of alerting products to China, involving 17 categories. The top two categories were food-related products, vegetables and their products, with 41 batches and 29 batches respectively, accounting for 39.05% and 27.62% of the total category.
The main reasons for the unqualified products in South Korea are unqualified quality indicators, excessive pesticide residues and illegal use of food additives.
4. alert notification from European Union
A total of 85 batches of Chinese products, involving 14 categories were notified by the EU RAFSS. The largest number of food related products were notified, with 40 batches, accounting for 47.06% of the total category.
The main reasons for the unqualified products of EU alerts to China are unqualified quality indicators and excessive pesticide residues.
5. alert notification from Japan
Japan has issued a total of 50 batches of 9 types of products. Food related products had the largest number of alert notifications with 18 batches, accounting for 34.62% of the total.
The main reasons for Japan's unqualified alerting products to China are unqualified quality indicators, exessive biotoxins pesticide residues and so on.
6. alert notification from Canada
Canada has issued a total of 32 batches of alerting products for China, including 4 categories. The larges tnumber of notifications is for special dietary food with 20 batches, accounting for 62.50% of the total category.
The main reasons for the unqualified products in Canada's notification to China are non-compliant labels and excessive microorganisms.
