The follow-up evaluation of “General Hygienic Regulation for Food Production” in China

This paper reports the findings on the implementation of compulsory food safety standard General Hygienic Regulation for Food Production (GB14881) in China. 18 of regulatory agencies (17.1%), 11 of research institutions (10.5%) and 76 of food enterprises (72.4%) were involved in this study. Overall, food enterprises had a higher awareness rate of GB14881 and there was an high level of satisfaction among the local regulatory agencies、research institutions and food enterprises. The results indicated that the major difficulty encountered during GB 14881 implementation was lack of finance. The most important motivation for implementing GB14881 was to comply with regulatory requirement. Structural changes to plant, investment in new equipment and product investigation/analysis were the biggest cost. The most important identified benefit was regulatory approval. The comprehensive data obtained from the implementation of compulsory food safety standards in China would be valuable consultation for substantial improvement to the policy makers on the standards.