China - New standards of Food Contact Material
From September 14th to December 18th, National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China issued 62 standards for food contact materials, which including “General safety provision of food contact materials and its products GB 4806.1-2016”, “The usage provision of additives of food contact materials and its products GB 9685-2016”, “The migration assay and pretreatment method of food contact materials and its products GB 5009.156-2016”, “Microbes testing methods GB 4789.15-2016”, “Tableware disinfection standard GB 14934-2016”, and 48 testing method standards and 9 products standard including plastics, glassware and metal.
A new national food contact materials standard system has been formed along with “nipple GB 4806.2-2015” and “GMP of food contact materials and its products GB 31603-2015” which issued in the year of 2015. The new standard system includes general standards, product standards, testing method standard and GMP. All of above standards will come into force at April 19th 2017.
According to these standards, permitted additives in food contact materials has been increased from 958 to 1294, the range of food contact materials covered more product compared with the old one, such as foodstuff processing machinery, transportation and assistive devices.
For most of food contact materials, the conformity testing becomes more and more strict.
Source: National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China