Goat Milk Powder Production Urgently Needs Industry Standard Guidance

Recently, the "Measures for the Registration and Administration of Infant Formula Milk Powder Formulas (Trial)" (draft for public comment) (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures") issued by the State Food and Drug Administration also contains many new provisions for goat milk powder, the current "newcomer" in the infant formula milk powder sector. At present, China's goat milk powder industry is still in an early stage of "barbaric growth," and prominent problems have already emerged in quality, production, management and market sales. The introduction of the new administrative Measures will help guide the industry toward healthy development as soon as possible.

At present, many domestic dairy enterprises have entered the goat milk powder market, and a large number of goat milk powder companies and brands have appeared on the market. However, the chaos in the goat milk powder market is also worrying. In the first 8 months of this year, the State Food and Drug Administration successively published two rounds of special national supervisory spot checks on infant formula milk powder, and the non-compliance rate detected for goat milk powder was higher than for other categories. The root cause of the chaos in the goat milk powder market still lies in the fact that China has not yet formulated industry standards or national standards for goat milk and goat milk powder.

In the "Measures," a "tightening band" has been placed on goat milk powder within the scope of infant formula milk powder. According to the draft for public comment, if the raw material of infant formula milk powder is goat milk (powder), the product name may be labeled as infant formula goat milk powder, and the proportion of goat milk (powder) per 100g of product, as well as the source of whey protein powder, shall be indicated in the ingredient list.

The above new rules are intended to raise the threshold through the measure of "labeling concentration." Relevant experts predict that after the implementation of the registration system, about half of these brands will be eliminated. Although goat milk products currently account for a very low proportion of the entire dairy market, their future development space is enormous, so there is an urgent need to issue specialized standards to guide the healthy development of the goat milk industry.