The General Office of the China Food and Drug Administration ("CFDA") has recently released the Standards for the Classification of Cosmetics (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") for public consultation by January 30, 2018.
Under the principle of "complying with laws and regulations and refining classification appropriately", "classifying cosmetics in a scientific way to ensure security" and "making clear coding rules to have an accurate positioning", the Draft for Comment introduces rules in three respects. The first is establishing classification principles on the basis of efficiency descriptions, targeted body parts, dosage form, target users, and security risks; the second is running the coding system; and the third is adopting the administration mode of open classification forms. According to the Draft for Comment, the linear method for classification, based on products' efficiency descriptions, targeted body parts and dosage form, in addition to potential users, is adopted to refine the classification of cosmetics. The codes of cosmetics are hierarchically structured by four parts, with the first through fourth parts combined together in sequence with a hyphen("-") between each other.