Food standards review to be completed in 2015

The government is expected to conclude its review of the country's 4,900 standards on food and drink processing by 2015, the Ministry of Health said on Aug 13.

The purpose of the review, which is led by the ministry, is to come up with science-based general standards on food and drink by revising, integrating, and abolishing some of the standards issued by different ministries.

"Before the Food Safety Law was announced, various ministries and departments released different standards. But some of the standards overlap or are detached from each other. There's also a lack of important standards, such as one on food packaging materials," said the country's 12th Five Year Plan on National Standards for Food Safety, which was issued in June.

"Most of the standards were issued a long time ago, and apply to other types of products," the plan also said.

Ministries were asked to review the standards and come up with new, science-based, standards covering products such as meat, wine, vegetable oil, seasonings, food additives, and infant formulas by the end of 2015.

The review process will cost about 250 million yuan ($39 million), said Yan Weixing, a researcher at the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment.

It costs about 50,000 yuan to formulate or revise a single standard, he said.

"The budget is relatively small," Yan said. "But the work did not start from scratch. It's a process of turning the results of basic studies into national standards. If we started from basic studies, then the costs would be much higher."

The review dates back to 2010, when the Ministry of Health conducted a review of more than 160 standards on dairy products, and reduced them to 68 new standards.