The new law stipulates higher fines for offenders and tightens controls on documentation, helping regulators detect forged documents.
It also provides for more transparency in food safety monitoring, suggesting that non-government groups will get more freedoms to sniff out violations. Such encouragement of external whistleblowers follows reforms to China’s Environmental Protection Law, implemented at the beginning of the year, which has led to campaigners highlighting water pollution problems.
If the new food safety law gives Chinese consumers greater confidence in the safety of the meat supply, this could be good news for all meat producers, said Joe Schuele, vice president of communications for the US Meat Export Federation (USMEF), a trade association promoting US red meat in the international markets.
Schuele said that raised health standards was good news for all meat producers: "It is a common misconception that domestic food safety scares in our international markets will boost demand for US meat, but this is rarely the case, as these incidents tend to dampen demand for all meat, or at least for meat from the specific species involved," he told GlobalMeatNews.
"Chinese consumers gaining confidence in the safety of their meat supply will bolster demand, which is good for all suppliers, foreign and domestic," he elaborated. Schuele stressed, however, that US beef still has no access to mainland China, the closure dating back to the 2003 BSE case.
The reforms, which will come into force on 1 October, are the first change to the law since it came into effect in 2009 and were crafted amid a long series of food safety scandals, which included selling pork from sick pigs and passing rat and fox meat off as mutton and beef.
According to Shanghai-based market researcher Daxue Consulting, the new regulation should help promote ongoing consolidation within the Chinese meat industry, encourage existing domestic players to become more competitive against foreign players, increase brand competition in segmented markets, as well as encouraging the simplification of supply chains and the ability to respond quickly to market shifts.
"However, all this is unlikely to change the trend of growing meat imports," said Thibaud Andre, consultant with Daxue. "With the Chinese people getting wealthier, the meat market is booming, so in the short run, China will rely on the world meat market to satisfy its needs," he added. Andre suggested that sustainable growth in Chinese meat production will be slow, leaving the country reliant on large-scale imports until at least 2050, especially for pork.