In recent years, the safety risk of imported foods has been slowly stressed with the increasing of imported food. In order to strengthen and standardize the management on safety of imported foods, and ensure the interests of Chinese consumers, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine released a notification to publish the “Administrative measures for accompanied certificates of imported foods (Exposure draft)” on June 8, 2017, and notify WTO/TBT, which shall come into effect from October 1, 2017. Applied by the competent authorities of the exporting country (region), it may be granted by an appropriate transition period with the consent of the AQSIQ.

In order to make countries exporting foods to China respond in a timely manner to reduce the loss, Foodmate.net extracted and organized the following key contents for your reference.

The information provided in the accompanied certificates of imported foods includes:

1) Information of manufacture

2) Product information

3) Trading information

4) The foods exported to China are produced, processed, stored, transported and exported under the administration of the competent authorities of the exporting country/region, which are applicable for human consumption.

5) The template of accompanied certificates for imported foods shall be filed at the AQSIQ, and the certificate can be issued either in paper version or electronic version. The contents of the certificate shall be consistent with the information of the certified commodities.

The disposal measures for unqualified certificates are as follow:

The inspection & quarantine authorities in China will inspect the certificates accompanied with the imported foods. For ones without accompanied certificate or certificates unqualified, the relevant commodities shall not be imported. At the same time AQSIQ may take the following measures:

(I) Where it is the authority issuing certificates responsible for the unqualified accompanied certificates, and there are more than 5 unqualified certificates occurred within 12 months, China may suspend to accept the certificate issued by this authority;

(II) Where there are more than 10 unqualified accompanied certificates occurred within 12 months and it is confirmed that the competent authority of the exporting country/region shall be responsible for this, AQSIQ may suspend to accept the certificate issued by this exporting country/region, and start the inspection & assessment procedure for the exporting country/region system.

It is observed in this exposure draft that AQSIQ not only further standardizes on the examination of the certificate form, but also makes a clear request for compliance content, requiring that the foods exported to China shall be completely suitable for human consumption. At the same time, the stringent requirements are imposed on the authority and country/region issuing certificates in the disposal measures taken for the unqualified certificates. For the manufactures, the exported products may certainly meet the requirements of this country provided they are produced, processed, stored and transported as required by the administration departments.

In recent years, China has continuously introduced the administration and controlling measures for the imported food safety laws and regulations. From the imported food importation filing system and accompanying with certificate of conformity system before importation, to the imported food risk monitoring system and the system of publishing the monthly information of unqualified entry product list at the importation, to overseas manufactures and importers credit recording system after importation, and the follow-up supervision system of imported foods, China will gradually strengthen the administration on the imported foods, and further regulate the market of imported foods.

In order to reduce the risk of enterprises exporting food to the market in China, Foodmate.net suggests that:

1) Before the exportation of food, take in-depth assessment for the feasibility of the product, including product standards and labeling standards, as well as the limit standards for pollutant and other compliance assessment related to China, and perform monitoring and verification for key projects by monitoring standards of China at the same time, so as to avoid causing serious losses to the enterprise due to failure in entry as a result of different monitoring measures;

2) After entering the market in China, export enterprises need to understand the real-time information related to food in market of China, including food safety incidents, updates of regulatory standards, and monitoring information of unqualified products. Make timely response measures according to the relevant information to minimize the risk of business.