The national board of health and health, together with the directorate-general for the supervision of national markets, issued today (27 days) 50 national standards for food safety and 9 amendments to the standards, which focus mainly on people's concerns and industrial development needs, interface between the standards and coordinate the management of food safety risks。
The new release standards include: 2 food labelling standards, 3 special dietary food standards, 4 food product standards, 3 production and business standards, 1 food-related product standard, 8 food additives and food nutrient fortification quality specifications, 29 test methods standards, and 9 standard amendments to the breast-breeding breast " contaminants in food " 。
To date, our country has issued a cumulative number of 1660 national standards for food safety, covering more than 20,000 indicators covering all of the 340 food categories. The four main categories of standards in the standard system, namely, common standards, product standards, production process norms and testing methods, are linked to each other. The four main categories of criteria are coordinated and control of food safety risks, covering the entire chain from farm land to table, regulating the chain from process to product, and protecting the entire population from the general to the special。
Two of the new food labelling standards have been fully optimized and upgraded, leading the international promotion of the application of food digit labels, improving consumer reading experience. In order to ensure their smooth implementation in the food industry, two-year transition periods have been set for both food labelling standards; the new product standards are closely related to the daily consumption of dairy products, meat products, infant and child food, food additives, disinfectants, etc., and further safeguard consumer food safety and nutritional health through measures such as clear scope of application. Specifically:
In addition, the release of standards for the quality of food additives and food nutrient fortifications has further improved the quality safety requirements for the relevant food additives and nutrients. For example, the revision of the food addition yellin could lead to technological innovation and industrial upgrading of chlorophyll producing enterprises and boost the economic efficiency of the whole industry chain of chlorophyll and related products。
The 29 newly published tests include: food additives, nutrients, contaminants, fungal toxins, food exposure materials and products, tests such as protoviruses, single-nucleocellinal growth of lesterella, safety evaluation procedures for bacterial species in food, and macrointestinal enzymes and eshicella counts。
The test method standards, which are compatible with the standards for the use of food additives (gb 2760), the limits of contaminants in food (gb 2762), the limits of pathogenicity in pre-packaged foods (gb 29921), the general rules for infant formulations for special medical purposes (gb 25596), and the bulletin of new food raw materials, have expanded the scope of the tests, optimized the testing steps, increased the detection methods, improved their applicability and operationality, further refined the system of test methods standards and provided scientific support for food safety supervision and management。
Forced marking of sensitive substances
Recommended identification of “consumer retention period”
Among the new standards issued this time, two new criteria on food labelling, both of which have a transition period of two years, are relevant to the daily choice of food. First, the national standards for food safety, general rules for pre-packaged food labelling, which, when implemented, will make it mandatory to mark sensitive substances on food labels, date, etc., will also change significantly。
What are prepackaged foods?
Prepackaged foods are those that are prepackaged or made in packaging materials and containers, and, in short, most of the foods we buy on a daily basis are prepackaged foods, except for fresh, etc. Pre-packaged food labels are “identity cards” for foodstuffs, and previously mandatory information included food names, distribution forms, net content and specifications, and shelf life。
Forced labelling of sensitizer information
The expert explained that food labelling was considered the most effective tool in managing global food allergies risk, and that, in order to ensure consumer food safety and minimize the probability of food allergies occurring, our food labelling would require mandatory labelling of sensitive material when new standards were implemented。
When pre-packaged foods use grains, crustaceans, fish, eggs, peanuts, soybeans, dairy, nuts and their products as food formulations, emphasis is placed on the formulation table in the form of thicker, underlined, etc., or at the bottom of the formulation table, through sensitivity tips, indicating the sensitive substances contained in the food. For those with an allergy history of food, special attention needs to be paid to alerting people about sensitive substances on food labels。
The warranty period is indicated as due date
There have also been significant changes in the labelling of food dates in the new standards, such as the new standards requiring prepackaged foods to have their shelf life in the form of maturity dates, the need for consumers to no longer compute their own shelf life, and a more intuitive presentation of warranty information. At the same time, it is stipulated that foods with a shelf life of more than six months may be produced without reference to the date of production, except for the period of food security and the expiry date of the shelf life。
In order to avoid food waste, the new standards are brought into line with international standards and provide food producers with a “consumer reserve period” for prepackaged foods, which may be indicated voluntarily by food attributes, edible characteristics, etc., as the date of final food consumption for consumer information。
It is particularly important to recall that food must be stored in accordance with labeled storage conditions and that inappropriate storage can reduce the shelf life of food and affect food safety and quality。
Scan digital tags, get food information
In addition, the new criteria state that our country has taken the lead in promoting the application of food digital labels at the international level and that food labels will formally begin to be digitized. Consumers can access information on food labelling through mobile devices, such as mobile phones, which scan the two-dimensional code on food labels。
Digital labels are more restricted than traditional food labels, and consumers can access food information through page magnification, voice reading and video presentations, thereby meeting the need for different consumers to read food labels, greatly increasing consumer experience and ease of access to food information, and addressing issues such as “unreadable” when some consumers read information because of small fonts。
It is understood that more than 400 pre-packaged foods have been used for digital labels and that the publication of new standards will provide a normative basis for the full application of digital labels in the food sector. Digital labels will continue to be applied to various food packagings, and consumers will experience greater ease of digital labeling。
Use of terms such as "no addition" is not allowed
Many food enterprises use the notion that consumers seek “natural” and do not like food additives and use “no add” or “no add” to claim to attract consumers. In order to avoid these claims being misleading to consumers, the new criteria for labelling pre-packaged foods clearly state that food formulations should no longer be given special emphasis by the words “no addition” and “no addition”。
"no add"
Maybe it's misleading
“do not add” is only a description of the production process that is not exactly equivalent to the content of the ingredients or components in the end product of the food。
The prohibition on the use of “zero addition” “no addition” in pre-packaged foods is intended to enable consumers to properly understand food labelling information, to choose food more scientifically and autonomously, and to avoid blinding consumers to these propaganda terms, ignoring the true attributes of the product and posing potential risks to food safety and health。
Read table of ingredients, table of nutrients
Consumers want to know the true attributes of food, and it is essential to read food labels properly, such as recipe tables, nutritional lists, etc。
Nutrient 1+4 expanded to 1+6
In addition to the new criteria for labelling foods, a new revised general code of nutritional labelling of pre-packaged foods has also undergone significant changes, such as the compulsory expansion of the range of nutrients, the addition of hints, etc., to guide the transformation of nutrition in the food industry and the healthy consumption of the diet。
The new standard expands the obligatory range of nutrients from “1+4”, i. E. Energy and proteins, fat, carbohydrates, sodium to “1+6”, with two additions of sugar and saturated fat (acid) to facilitate consumer choice of consumption according to individual needs and control of ingestion of energy and fat, sugar, etc。
Guide consumers
Salt, oil, sugar
This is due to the fact that the main nutrition and health problems facing the country today are focused mainly on the high incidence of chronic diseases such as obesity and the increase in mortality due to chronic diseases, which is the focus and difficulty of public health prevention and control. Unreasonable diets such as high salt, fat and sugar are risk factors for obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and other metabolic diseases and tumours. The reference nutrient intake for chinese residents and the guidebook for chinese residents clearly state that “saturated fatty acids are less than 10 per cent controlled” “control sugar-added intake, which does not exceed 50 g per day, preferably under 25 g”. In order to implement the healthy lifestyle of salt, oil and sugar reduction, nutritional labelling has now made it mandatory to mark sodium and fat content. This revision further increases the requirements for saturated fats (acid) and sugar on the original basis, and it is hoped that a more comprehensive presentation of food nutrition information will further guide consumers。
Children and adolescents should avoid over-ingestion of salt and sugar
In recent years, the problem of overweight obesity among our population has been highlighted, as has the rate of overweight obesity among children and young people. The current rates of overweight and obesity are 6. 8 per cent and 3. 6 per cent for children under 6 and 11. 1 per cent and 7. 9 per cent for adolescents between 6 and 17 years of age, respectively. At the same time, the development of children's tastes during their adolescence is of great importance in guiding children's healthy diets from an early age and inculcating light eating habits. In addition, article 55 of the law of the people's republic of china on the protection of minors explicitly requires that food items and supplies intended for minors should be marked in a prominent location. In order to implement the requirements of the law of the people's republic of china on the protection of minors, namely, the reduction of salt, the reduction of oil, the reduction of sugar, and the implementation of the “triple reduction” of healthy lifestyles, in order to guide consumers, especially children and adolescents, to the total intake of salt oil and sugar in their diets, the revision of this standard requires that pre-packaged foods be marked as “children and adolescents should avoid over-ingestion of salt and oil and sugar” and that they be made aware of the dual effects of salt and sugar on health and reflect the health concerns of this particular group。
Nutrition labels contain these
Following the revision of the criteria, the nutritional labels consist mainly of four components: nutritional table, nutritional statement, nutritional function statement and other supplementary information。
Tables of nutritional composition are very important and often contain three columns of data:
Among nutrient types, according to the latest revised criteria, energy, protein, fat, saturated fat (acid), carbohydrates, sugar, sodium, and the remaining nutrients, such as vitamins and calcium and iron, must be marked as voluntary by the enterprise。
Nutritional claims include two types of statement of content and comparison:
The nutritional function claims that a simple understanding is to describe the nutritional effect of a nutritional component on the human body. What we often see on food packaging, for example, is that calcium helps to strengthen bones and teeth, and it describes calcium nutrition. The assertion of the role of each nutrient component in the nutritional labelling standard is strictly standard and cannot be changed at will。
In addition, additional information has been added to this revision of the criteria. In order to increase consumer interest in nutritional labelling, enterprises are allowed to supplement nutritional labelling with graphics, textual, etc., after the correct and standardized presentation of nutritional information in the nutritional composition table, as required by the standards. For example, consumers can replace fat and sodium with well-known oils and salt, and “kjio” can be replaced by “cards”, or the pagoda graphics and core recommended entries of the guide to chinese residents' diets can be used to promote rational diets and “triple reduction”
