Submitted comments to the GACC on “Management Measure of Import and Export Food Safety (Draft for Comments)”

2020-07-11 | All chapters

The European Chamber welcomes the realease of the “Management Measure of Import and Export Food Safety (Draft for Comments)”, which helps ensure food safety and consumer's health. In general, the Chamber has below comments:

1. 

It is important to avoid unnecessary constraints to and the disruption of international trade, in conformity with WTO agreements. International principles for this balanced approach should therefore be taken into account, in particular:

Article 2.2 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) calls on WTO members to ensure "that technical regulations are not prepared, adopted or applied with a view to or with the effect of creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade.  For this purpose, technical regulations shall not be more trade-restrictive than necessary to fulfil a legitimate objective, taking account of the risks non-fulfilment would create".

Article 5 of the TBT agreement rules that "conformity assessment procedures shall not be stricter or be applied more strictly than is necessary to give the importing Member adequate confidence that products conform to the applicable technical regulations or standards";

Codex Alimentarius Directive CAC/GL 20-1995 on principles for food import and export inspection and certification specifies that:

“Inspection systems to ensure food safety should be designed and operated on the basis of objective risk assessment appropriate to the circumstances. Preferably the risk assessment methodology employed should be consistent with internationally accepted approaches. Risk assessment should be based on currently available scientific evidence. Inspection systems should be applied to particular commodities and processing methods in proportion to the assessed risks.”

Therefore, a reference to the standards produced by the international organisations (Codex, OIE, ICPV and OIV) should be made in the chapter on “General provisions” (articles 1-9). This reference would be in line with the “joint international governance” mentioned in article 3 and article 8, as well as “the bilateral or multilateral agreements concluded between China and relevant countries or international organisations” mentioned in article 4. It should then be logical and more precise to specify that the standards of the above mentioned international organisations should be taken into account for the implementation of these measures.

2. 

Measures (and constraints) taken to control food safety must follow the fundamental principle that the extent of these measures must be based on the risk assessment of the food concerned, especially between high-risk products and low-risk products. This principle is mentioned in some articles of the project, but not in all. It could therefore be understood that its implementation is restricted to the sole articles where it is mentioned. It would therefore be useful that GACC mention this principle as a transversal rule in the chapter on “General provisions” (articles 1-9), and / or mention it in all articles where it should be applied. Adopting the same regulatory measure for all food categories would cause unnecessary waste of administrative resources, lacks scientific evidence, and is against the concept and principle of risk-based regulation. It is suggested that the concept of risk-based regulation be further clarified in the Measure and appropriate regulatory approaches be employed for different food safety risks, for purpose of perfecting food safety inspection systems while taking into consideration the issue of trade facilitation measures.

3. With the promulgation and implementation of these Measures, the regulatory requirements and measures for import and export food safety will be greatly changed. A number of new regulatory requirements have been added to these measures, some of which are put forward for the first time. Therefore, it is recommended to publish supporting secondary documents as soon as possible, clarify the detailed requirements, and give the enterprise a two-year transition period to facilitate adequate preparation and successful completion of the transition.

4. The Measure is of great significance to the import and export food industry, and the Draft Amendment is quite different in terms of structure and content from the previous edition of the Measure from two years ago, it is recommended that the General Administration of Customs of the People’s Republic of China (GACC) notify the World Trade Organization (WTO) of this Draft Amendment.

5. Articles 40 onwards introduce a stringent procedure to disqualify imported foodstuffs not complying with Chinese rules. We would welcome confirmation that minor omissions or mistakes not endangering human health should not lead Chinese authorities to “disqualify” the food product in question and that corrective/alternative solutions may be found, as is current practice. It is equally important to provide concerned economic operators and competent authorities of the exporting country with a procedure to contest the disqualification.