China's Food Packaging Safety Oversight: QS Access, Green Rules and Plastic Bag Limits

China has tightened supervision and inspection of food safety and hygiene, advanced the Safe Food Project, and implemented QS certification and market access. At the same time, the hygiene and safety of food packaging materials are now subject to regulation and testing. Several cases involving excessive benzene in food packaging bags drew widespread public concern. The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine reviews market access for food-use plastic packaging, containers, utensils and similar products and issues production licences as a way to monitor and ensure food packaging quality and safety.

Packaging problems found in green food and in food without certification are largely the same. Looking at the development of green food, the related standard-setting process and quality supervision, real attention to green, environmentally friendly food packaging came relatively late: the General Rules for Green Food Packaging were not formally issued until the second half of 2006.

The General Rules for Green Food Packaging set out the principles that green food packaging must follow, covering packaging requirements, choice of packaging materials, packaging dimensions, packaging inspection, sampling, marking and labels, storage and transport. They require suitable materials, containers, forms and methods to be chosen for different green foods so that basic food packaging needs are met. Packaging volume and mass should be kept low, with reduction promoted. Where technical conditions permit and this matches the relevant commodity provisions, reusable packaging should be preferred; if reuse is not possible, materials should be recyclable; and if recycling is not possible, packaging waste should be degradable.

For plastic packaging, the rules add specific provisions: materials used should be reusable, recyclable or degradable; single-material options should be used as much as possible while keeping contents intact; polyvinyl chloride products must meet GB 9681 for monomer content; polystyrene resin or moulded products must meet the corresponding national standards; expanded polystyrene (EPS), polyurethane (PUR) and similar products containing CFS must not be used; and the ink for printed marks on outer packaging or the adhesive for labels must be non-toxic and must not touch food directly.

These rules, however, remain largely principled requirements for green food packaging and do not yet set more detailed, stringent data standards, reflecting the actual conditions of China's food and packaging industries at the time.

In January 2008, the General Office of the State Council issued the Notice on Restricting the Production, Sale and Use of Plastic Shopping Bags, stating that from June 1, 2008, producing, selling and using plastic bags thinner than 0.025 mm would be banned nationwide, and that paid use of plastic shopping bags would apply in all commodity retail outlets, including supermarkets, shopping malls and farmers markets. On February 10, 2008, the relevant state departments published a draft national standard for plastic bags for public comment, setting clear requirements in many areas for the long-unregulated manufacture, transport and storage, and sale of plastic bags. The national standard raised the industry threshold and created new opportunities for green packaging.

Experts recommend that China formulate a packaging law as soon as possible, making clear that clean energy and raw materials must be used in packaging production and, through legislation, banning packaging materials that contain harmful components as well as packaging containers and materials that fail to reach the recycling ratio or cannot be reused; setting quantitative standards for excessive packaging as soon as possible and explicitly prohibiting excessive or single-use packaging; requiring that packaging waste be avoided, that companies recycle and reuse packaging waste or use it as usable energy, and that remaining packaging waste be landfilled in an environmentally compatible way; and urging the government to promote the purchase and use of environmentally friendly green packaging goods and to create preferential policies in industry, finance, credit and taxation.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362276.html