How can campus meals be more strictly controlled? If food is sold in the live broadcast room, who will be responsible if something goes wrong? Yesterday, the State Administration for Market Regulation publicly solicited opinions from the public on the "Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China (Revised Draft for Comments)". The "Draft for Comments" released this time involves revisions in many aspects such as artificial intelligence supervision and online food operations.
Kitchen monitoring will be connected to the supervision platform
Compared with the current Food Safety Law, the "Draft for Comments" released this time has 37 new articles and 93 revised articles. The first is to clearly strengthen smart supervision, promote the application of "Internet + artificial intelligence" supervision, clarify that food production and operation enterprises should install monitoring equipment in key risk links of food production and operation, and connect real-time monitoring video information to the information system of the market supervision department of local people's governments at or above the county level.
In this regard, the person in charge of the Food Coordination Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation pointed out that the current policies and regulations only encourage and advocate the implementation of "bright kitchens and bright stoves", and supervision lacks a strong legal basis. The new regulations provide for "bright kitchens and bright stoves", which can effectively protect consumers' rights to know and choose, and help promote catering service providers to bid farewell to chances.
Hu Gang, deputy secretary-general of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Internet Society of China, said that traditional supervision methods are difficult to detect food safety problems quickly and efficiently. By implementing "Internet + Bright Kitchen + AI Supervision" and using artificial intelligence to automatically capture violations in food production and processing and restaurant kitchens, it can effectively reduce the pressure of manual inspections and accurately discover hidden risks.
Added a special section on "Online Food Business"
The "Draft for Comments" also adds a special section on "Online Food Operations", implements hierarchical filing management, and clarifies the responsibilities of the platform, live broadcast room operators, live broadcast marketers and other parties. Hu Gang pointed out that this is a substantial upgrade to the online food trading regulations in the existing food safety law, from decentralized principles to dedicated regulations.
Hu Gang: Its core system design includes two levels. First, it establishes a hierarchical filing management system. Second, it implements hierarchical configuration according to different business forms and relevant operators, strengthens the main responsibilities, and covers the complete full-chain supervision situation of the platform, live broadcast room operators, and live broadcast marketers.
The "Draft for Comments" requires online food trading platform operators to establish branches or offices in provincial-level areas where online food trading is conducted. In this regard, the person in charge of the Food Coordination Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation pointed out that the establishment of branches or offices can break down cross-regional regulatory and law enforcement barriers, consolidate the platform's local responsibilities, quickly respond to local consumer complaints, handle food safety emergencies on the spot, and shorten the risk management chain.
Food additives and related products will be included in the monitoring chain
In response to issues such as the misuse and abuse of food additives that have been of concern to the public in recent years, the "Draft for Comments" clarifies that the food safety management system will be optimized and the scope of food safety risk monitoring will be expanded to include food additives and food-related products.
Ruan Guangfeng, deputy director of the Kexin Food and Health Information Exchange Center, pointed out that this revision aims to improve the food safety system by extending the monitoring chain to food additives and related products to achieve full-chain management and promote supervision from passive post-event processing to proactive early warning.
Ruan Guangfeng said that after the revision of the Food Safety Law is implemented, by expanding the scope of food safety risk monitoring, relevant data can be further accumulated, risk communication and science popularization can be better carried out, and unnecessary public panic about food additives can be alleviated.
Strictly prohibit false misleading and regulate food labeling and commercial promotion
In recent times, the marketing chaos of "scheming trademarks" such as "hand-made noodles", "NFC juice" and "zero card" has attracted attention. The "Draft for Comments" proposes to standardize food labels and commercial promotions, and strictly prohibit false misleading. Ruan Guangfeng pointed out that the core function of this revision is to establish the principle of "substance over form".
Ruan Guangfeng: Trademark registration does not exempt the label from the obligation to be truthful. Even if it is a legally registered trademark, as long as it is used prominently on the packaging, if it is enough to cause ordinary consumers to misunderstand the process, weight, ingredients, health attributes, etc. of the food, it constitutes false misleading.
Data shows that since 2023, the State Intellectual Property Office has rejected more than 1.27 million applications for "scheming trademarks" that can easily mislead consumers. As of press time, 3,194 deceptive trademarks have been declared invalid ex officio.
Strictly implement "punishment to the individual"
The "Draft for Comments" also proposes to improve the legal liability system, set differentiated punishment ranges according to the types of violations, strictly implement "punishment targeted to the individual", and impose penalties on responsible personnel who intentionally violate the law, are of a bad nature, and whose violations cause serious consequences.
Hu Gang said that it is necessary to lift the company's "veil" and extend penalties to specific individuals. At the same time, relevant penalty clauses have been added and completed to increase the cost of violations. At the same time, a credit management system for food safety has been implemented, emphasizing the implementation of a cross-departmental breach of trust punishment system. The above measures all emphasize the legislative ideas of the entire chain of food safety, strong supervision, and "heavy bite".
