On November 23, 2023, we hosted a free webinar on the changes in the new standards for China food contact materials and articles food enterprises’ response. The playback of the webinar is now available. If you missed this webinar you can watch it free by following the link here. Many questions were raised during the webinar. We have collected the questions and made a Q&A summary as follows:

On September 25, 2023, China National Health Commission (NHC) issued 17 national standards for food contact materials. Among them, there are 5 product standards (ink, plastic, metal, rubber, composite materials) and 12 testing standards. In addition to the revision of the existing standards, new product standard and testing standards have been enacted, such as GB 4806.14-2023 ink standard. The series of standards released have brought significant changes to the regulatory requirements for food contact materials, and upstream and downstream enterprises in the food contact industry need to respond in time. CIRS Group will launch an online training session on November 23 to analyze the new regulatory requirements for food contact materials and help enterprises respond promptly and accurately.

According to the recent consulting situation from CIRS, we found that enterprises have asked more valuable questions related to FSMP, indicating that they are gradually comprehensive on this kind of products. In order to help consumers and enterprises to have a better understanding of FSMP registration-related affairs and its clinical trial requirements, CIRS Group will hold a webinar in June 14.

In order to help enterprises understand the application of new food additives (including GMM derivatives, enzymes, flavors, and nutrition enhancers) in China, CIRS Group will hold a webinar on May 24, 2023. Please refer to the following information for the specific time, content, and registration.

In order to help domestic and overseas enterprises have a better understanding of the key points to the preparation for new food raw material application, CIRS Group will hold a webinar in May 16, 2023. Please refer to the following information for the specific time, content and way of attending.

In recent years, due to the lack of awareness or understanding of Chinese food label regulations by food production and management enterprises (including import enterprises), non-standard product labels, non-compliant claims and false advertising and other irregularities often happened. Besides, in view of the increasing attention of the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) to the regulation of false advertising of food, how to grasp the scale of advertising has also become a challenge faced by enterprises. Food production and management enterprises urgently need to learn the regulatory requirements of food labeling, but also to understand the publicity key points of food advertising in order to effectively avoid regulatory risks. Based on this background, CIRS holds this webinar to explain the key points of pre-packaged food labeling and grasp the scale of food advertising through case studies. In addition, CIRS will also introduce the revision progress of the of GB 7718, GB 28050 and other label regulations, so as to help enterprises better grasp the direction of future label regulations.

According to the requirements in the Food Safety Law of China, the new food raw materials and additives used for food production should pass the safety assessment of the National Health Commission (NHC). In recent years, with the support of favorable policies, enterprises have made many innovations, which promote the emergence of various new raw materials seeking compliance with relevant regulations. With the goal of helping enterprises to have an overview of the current food industry, this webinar will analyze the application approval of new food raw material and additives in China from 2018 to 2022, and share the latest information of research and compliance progress of those hot food raw materials such as HMOs, NMN, and postbiotics.

In order to help enterprises understand the current situation of the industry and clarify the direction of application, CIRS Group will hold a webinar to introduce the correlation and difference between "new food raw materials" and "new food additives" (including ingredients produced by transgenic technology), and talk about the latest progress of hot ingredients such as "breast milk oligosaccharide (HMOs), β-nicotinamide single nucleotide (NMN)".

In the past, except for registration of new enzymes produced by GMMs, other registrations of new food additives or food raw materials produced by GMMs are unacceptable by National Health Commission (NHC) in China, which means, these new food ingredients have no chance to enter the Chinese market as a food additive or food raw material. In the year of 2021, NHC opened the application channel for GMM food additives.

In recent years, domestic and overseas enterprises are enthusiastic about the registration of new food raw materials in China. In 2021 alone, 27 new food raw materials were accepted by the National Health Commission (NHC), more than two times the number accepted in 2020. To apply for a new food raw material, the applicant needs to complete the preparation of a series of materials such as the raw material development report, safety assessment report and production process material. In order to help enterprises understand the status of new food raw material application and management system in China, CIRS Group will hold a webinar in June 2022.