The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China ("CPCCC") and the State Council have recently distributed the Opinions on Deepening the Reform to Strengthen Food Safety (the "Opinions").
The Opinions foresee that a food safety regulatory system based on risk analysis and supply chain management will be preliminarily established by 2020, and generally over 97% of major agricultural products will pass the quality and safety tests, while more than 98% of food will pass spot checks at that time, adding that the national governance system and the governance capacity will be essentially modernized for the field of food safety by 2035. To this end, the Opinions map out several tasks including "establishing the most rigorous standards" and "adopting the strictest regulatory approaches". Meanwhile, it is required to have food manufacturers and operators fulfill their subjects' responsibilities and to promote the high-quality development of the food industry. According to the Opinions, research will be carried out into revisions to the current Food Safety Law and its supporting regulations and systems, and revisions to improve the provisions of the Criminal Law with respect to offences of endangering food safety and the corresponding criminal penalties; efforts will also be made to accelerate the revision of the Law on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products, conduct research to formulate the law on grain safety assurance, and write the traceability of agricultural products into the law. In addition, judicial interpretations cited to handle criminal cases involving acts undermining food safety will be optimized at a faster pace, to directly impose criminal punishment against production and sale of counterfeits that endanger food safety.