Growing pains for China’s heath foods and supplements markets
The recent slew of crackdowns, regulatory renew (including regulations and taxes) and stricter rules for China’s health foods and supplements are “growing pains” for the industry. Jeff Crowther, executive director of trade body Health Products Association – China (HPA-China), however, believe the e-commerce sector will continue to thrive despite the increasingly these stricter rules and more frequent crackdowns.
Let us review the regulatory renew part here.
SAMR/CFDA just announced her act on adjusting health food function. The purposes are to further strengthen the management of the health food function claim management, to eliminate the falsely publicized health food function claims, to improve the consumer's scientific cognition and accurate judgment of the health food function claims, and to avoid confusion with the drug disease prevention and treatment. Overall, there are 18 functions are going to be rephrased and 3 functions are going to be cancelled (namely, 1.Cosmetology (Improving skin oil content function) / Improving skin oil content function; 2. Facilitating growth and development /Improving growth and development; 3. Facilitating milk secretion). There are 18 functions had been approved in the past are also cancelled permanently while 6 functions need to be studied more.
A key part of the review is to consider the cancellation of existing health claims targeted at “special consumer groups”, such as teenagers, children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers. These claims are “promoting lactation”, “promoting/improving growth”, and “improving oily skin”. Another part of the review is to formally do away with health claims that are no longer accepted by the regulator. There are at least 18 such claims, including “preventing tooth decay” and “reducing wrinkles”.
The one-month public consultation will end on April 28. If approved, the new regulations would be applied to both domestic and foreign enterprises.
Functional Food regulation compliance
https://www.e-sinew.com/site/EN/SAMR/FunctionalFood.php