The State Council has released a guideline for work on food safety in 2017, with the goal of ensuring people’s health and safety.

The move is aimed at addressing people’s major concerns on food safety, improving related departments’ ability to manage and ensure food safety while pushing forward supply-side structural reform, in order to help build a well-off society in an all-around way.

To achieve the target, the guideline urged efforts to improve related laws and regulations on food safety, develop and revise national standards in key fields of food safety, carry out measures to prevent pollution in agricultural production, and promote the transformation and upgrading of food industries.

According to the guideline, related departments should speed up building a legal system on food safety and enhance its enforcement, to strictly crack down on illegal activities such as producing or selling counterfeit goods.

It also urged that domestic food safety standards should be aligned with international ones, especially on key products and indicators such as heavy metal and organic pollutants, infant formulas and food for medical use.

Further legislation on soil pollution and enhanced quality standards for soil environment are underlined in the action plan for the prevention of air, water and soil pollution.

To guarantee quality and safety in agricultural products, the guideline required related industries to implement agricultural standardization and promote the production of superior quality, safe and organic food products.

In addition, to control food safety risks, related departments should strengthen regional and departmental safety supervision through internet and big data, crack down on any illegal activities that pose a threat to food safety while establishing a comprehensive and powerful supervision system at the grassroots level.

（Reposted from:English.gov.cn） 

Approved by the State Council, since May 11, 2016, the transition period of the regulation requirements of China's cross-border E-commerce retail import extend one year.

Yesterday, Pingtan launched its Cross-border E-commerce Traceability System, the first in Fujian province, to ensure foreign products into Pingtan Port come from traceable origin, and thus build up consumer confidence. 

One of the key functions of this Cross-border E-commerce Traceability System is to provide consumers detailed information of products just by scanning a code printed into the imported product.

This first consignment of product that enters the port is milk powder from Australia. Yesterday morning at the Cross-border E-commerce Compliance Center, inspectors from Pingtan CIQ conducted an inspection on the consignment by scanning the code on the label attached to the tin bottom to check its origin and related certification.

This service is a cooperation between Pingtan CIQ and CCIC Australia Pty Ltd. With advantage of CCIC’s global network, a traceability service platform has been built so that information obtained from audits in Australian can be shared to include label approval, loading supervision, pre-shipment quality inspection and origin traceability.

“As a third party service provider, CCIC carries out an audit in Australia on production premises, checks production date and packaging details before issuing a traceability certificate. The coded label attached thereafter makes it easy for consumers to learn about detailed product information.” Li Xiaolin from CCIC commented.

With assistance from CCIC Group and its Australia company, CCIC Fujian works with local CIQ in a new “1+2”model to achieve compliance with a system of registration, record filing, application assessment, risk analysis and data exchange. This traceability system has helped to improve supervision and management by monitoring the whole chain in Cross-border E-commerce trade.

“When the goods arrived, Pingtan CIQ merely checks the pre-shipment inspection results with documents related to the factual consignment. This saves us time and cuts logistic costs as there is no delay at the port.”According to Pingtan CIQ section chief Zhang Jinhu.

Mr Chen Shi who represents the importer of this Australian infant formula consignment also commented that service through this Traceability system not only saves them time and money, but also helps build consumer confidence.

Recently, a delegation of three officials from Chinese Consulate General in Sydney headed by the Economic and Commercial Counselor Wang Hongbo had a visit to CCIC Australia to learn about its Traceability Service for Australian Exports to China and had a friendly talk with the Company’s General Manager Mr. Liu Hualu.

Before the meeting, the counselor had visited the production premises of Australian United Pharmaceutical Pty Ltd where she witnessed the work of inspection by CCIC surveyors in respect of production qualifications, plant and equipment, quality control of raw materials, sample test and other conditions. A CCIC security label shall be attached to packages of its EAORON Hyaluronic Acid Collagen Essence for origin traceability purpose.