Food Protection Trends - November 2008 - 766

Safe agro-product certification was drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) under the Safe Agricultural Products Action Plan and launched in 2003. Certified-safe agro-products must comply with a number of standards that ensure use of safe materials in production, compliance with approved production procedures and regulations, the safety of the production environment, and the quality and safety of the agro-products themselves. These requirements are specific to particular agro-products (e.g., eggs, leeks, tomatoes). Safe agro-product certification is applied primarily to edible agro-products, which then receive a special logo. The certification aims to ensure that basic requirements for food are met and to satisfy consumer demand. The introduction of safe agro-product certification introduces a government-driven mechanism, with the MOA in charge of enforcement. The standard is considered a Ministerial standard and is applied nationally. The safe agro-products standard is currently optional, but plans are to gradually make it mandatory for some products in some major cities, beginning in 2008. The Standardization Administration of the People’s Republic of China audits the standard and accredits certifiers; third party certifiers do the actual certification work. However, most certifiers for safe agro-products (and for Green Food, as described below) are governmental or quasi-governmental bodies. Green food certification, initiated by the MOA in 1990, is applied to processed edible agro-products. It requires that agro-products be grown in a favorable environment and that quality control and other compulsory requirements be implemented throughout the production process. In a word, green food is certified as safe, unpolluted, and of good quality. Green food certification is intended to satisfy higher quality consumption requirements, such that the certified products satisfy the safety and quality requirements of developed countries. Unlike safe agro-product certification, green food certification adopts a government-guided but market-driven mechanism. Organic food is, in general, food from plants and animals that have been grown without the use of artificial, synthetic fertilizers or pesticides and without antibiotics, growth hormones, feed addi- tives, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Organic food certification generally is for primary agro-products or primary-processed agro-products, and it is also market-driven. Unlike producers of safe agro-products or green food, for whom certification is handled by governmental units, producers of organic food may choose among the approximately 30 certification agencies operating in China. By 2005, 16,704 agro-products had been certified as safe, with 10,583 certified producers involved and with a total output of 104 million tons and 21,627 production sites in China had been certified as safe agro-product production sites (1). Green food and organic food had also developed rapidly; by the end of 2005, the total output of green food in China had amounted to 63 million tons per annum, with annual sales of US $12.747 billion (at the 2005 exchange rate) and exports of US $1.620 billion (4). Organic food appeared on the Chinese market in 2000; its production value climbed to roughly US $371.29 million by the end of 2005 (3). Today, many primary agro-products and raw materials have been certified, and many exporters have also received quality system certifications or quality verifications by importers. The growth rate of green food exports increased by 40% from 2001 to 2005, and exports quadrupled in value, increasing from US $400 million in 2001 to US $1.62 billion in 2005. As a percentage of total exported food, green food increased from 6.5% to 13.1% (2). 3. The appointed testing agency for safe agro-products takes charge of sampling and testing. 4. A specialized certification center, the Center for Agro-Food Quality and Safety (CAQS) of the MOA reviews the provincial operation agency’s conclusions and the application files and examines the feasibility of control measures in the production process as well as the compliance shown in production documents and test reports of products. 5. CAQS holds a meeting for a final review based on the information from specialized certification centers. 6. If the review is passed, CAQS issues the certificate, approves the certification logo, and reports to the MOA and Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People’s Republic of China (CACN) for a joint declaration. China has also established a procedure for green food certification, which is similar to that of organic food certification. The Center for China Green Food Development is an important certification body, and the following steps are set up by it and available to domestic applicants: 1. An applicant submits relevant files to the green food administration agency at the provincial level; these files include an application, a survey form for the enterprise and production, an announcement of compliance with green food standards and requirements, documents related to production practices, and the quality control system, and other documents. 2. The provincial green food administration agency takes charge of reviewing all application documents within a given time, informs the applicant of the review results, and simultaneously reports to The Center for China Green Food Development. If the documents are incomplete, the applicant is requested to provide complementary documents within a given period of time. If the documents are inadequate, the applicant will be informed that the application will not be considered again within the same growth cycle. Procedures of third party certification The procedure for safe agro-product certification includes the following: 1. The agricultural administrative authority at the provincial level is in charge of certifying the original production environment for a safe agro-product and issuing the certificate. 2. An applicant submits a safe agroproduct certification application and relevant documents to the provincial operation agency, which is in charge of verifying the authenticity, veracity and integrity of the files and executing an on-site examination. 766 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | NOVEMBER 2008

Food Protection Trends - November 2008

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