The new labeling system will become a technical barrier to export food in China

China's food and other export products are often sealed, detained, returned, destroyed, and even subjected to comprehensive embargoes by importing countries on various pretexts. At present, the food labelling system has become an insurmountable technical barrier for China's export of food. The food labeling system of major countries is as follows:

1. EU

In 2006, the European Union issued Regulation 1924/2006 on Food Nutrition and Health. The regulation was formally implemented on July 1, 2007 and applies to any food or drink sold in the EU market for human consumption. The introduction of the new regulations aims to ensure that nutrition information provided by food packaging to consumers is more accurate and reliable so as to avoid misunderstandings by consumers.

2. United States

The US Department of Agriculture’s labeling system for organic foods states that any food that has an organic level of 95% or more may be affixed with a green round mark with the words “organic” and “United States Department of Agriculture” in English. Foods with an organic degree of 70% to 95% cannot be labeled, but they can be marked on the label “containing organic ingredients”. Whether foods are qualified to be labeled with organic foods must be certified by a specialized agency approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

3. Russia

The Russian National Standardization Committee re-established and implemented “TOCTP51014-2003/ General Requirements for Food Consumption Instructions”, which stipulates the new standards for the content of food labels, and must specify the country of origin, the manufacturer’s name and address, and the consumption description (food label). The product name, product composition, capacity, food value, use and storage conditions, pot life, storage period, production and packaging date, code, and food ingredient list are important information. The consumption statement should be in Russian and require food and food additives. The name must comply with the provisions of the Russian Federation national standards.

The main influence of the new labeling system on China's food exporting enterprises is twofold:

(1) The implementation of the new labeling system has increased the export costs of food exporting enterprises in China

To complete the testing of the ingredients required by the new label, companies need to pay an additional test fee, and these new labels require high testing requirements, increasing the difficulty of detection, thus further increasing the testing fee and increasing the export costs of food exporting enterprises in China.

(2) The new labeling system has led to a lot of uncertainties in export inspection and customs clearance.

For Chinese enterprises, because domestic requirements are not strict, companies rarely come into contact with food nutrition testing procedures. This is relatively unfamiliar to them. Therefore, they are inefficient when producing food labels, and their quality is not high, coupled with the stringent requirements of foreign countries for labeling. It will be difficult for China's food exporting companies to fully comply with the requirements of the new labeling system in a short period of time.

Since there are few authoritative inspection agencies for nutrition labels in China, the quality of labels produced in China depends to a certain extent on the relevant testing departments in the importing country. This will make our food companies in a very passive position. According to its own interests, the importing congress will consider that if the Chinese food exported to the country is not conducive to domestic industry, it can pass through the approval of the importing country to seek excuses and not pass the examination and approval. This will cause China's food companies to suffer huge losses when they export.

The implementation of the new food labeling system has further increased the risk of entry into the international market for China's food exporting companies and increased the export costs of enterprises. Due to the company’s unresponsiveness, the importing countries sealed off, detained, returned, and destroyed all kinds of excuses, which caused great losses to China’s food companies and also caused a lot of adverse effects on China's export of food.