Food processing with recycled food ingredients to be fined 100,000 yuan, Ministry of Health issues new rules

Henan Business Daily reported on April 12: Have you had gutter oil today? Nowadays, food safety has become a matter of concern for many people. On May 1, two new catering regulations issued by the Ministry of Health, the "Measures for the Administration of Catering Service Licensing" and the "Measures for the Administration of Food Safety Supervision in Catering Services," will officially take effect. Using recycled food as an ingredient to make and process food can be punished with a maximum fine of 100,000 yuan.

Using recycled food to make things to eat

Maximum fine of 100,000 yuan

Recently, gutter oil has become a topic of public concern.

The new supervision measures once again reiterate the issue of using recycled food as an ingredient to process food.

The regulations state that using recycled food as an ingredient, or using non-food materials to make and process food, or adding chemical substances other than food additives, and other substances that may endanger human health to make and process food, will be punished in accordance with the Food Safety Law.

According to the Food Safety Law, the competent authorities will confiscate the illegal gains of producers and operators as well as the illegally produced and operated food, tools, and so on; if the value of the confiscated food is less than 10,000 yuan, a fine of not less than 2,000 yuan and not more than 50,000 yuan shall also be imposed; if the value is 10,000 yuan or more, a fine of not less than five times and not more than ten times the value shall also be imposed; if the circumstances are serious, the license shall be revoked.

“I hope the regulations can be implemented and gutter oil kept off our dining tables,” said resident Mr. Zhang.

License revoked

Responsible managers barred from catering for 5 years

“If the license is revoked, can't they just open another restaurant?” some residents said.

The new rules stipulate that for units whose "Catering Service License" has been revoked, the directly responsible managers shall not engage in catering service management work for 5 years from the date the penalty decision is made.

Compared with the currently implemented rule that “if a food producer or operator has its hygiene license revoked for violating food hygiene regulations, its legal representative or main person in charge may not apply for a hygiene license for 3 years,” the new measures are clearly more deterrent.

The new rules also clearly stipulate that catering service providers shall establish a system of procurement inspection and certificate and ticket collection for food, food ingredients, food additives, and food-related products. Records and receipts shall be kept for no less than 2 years.

The purpose of this is to enable rapid, accurate, and efficient tracing when handling food safety issues, thereby reducing damage and lowering risks.

For catering service providers that violate the procurement certificate and ticket collection rules, the food and drug supervision and administration department will order them to make corrections and give a warning; if they refuse to make corrections, a fine of not less than 2,000 yuan and not more than 20,000 yuan shall be imposed; if the circumstances are serious, they shall be ordered to suspend business, up to revocation of the license.

Residents question

If relevant departments do not act firmly, will the regulations become empty words again?

“If relevant departments do not act firmly to regulate it, the gutter oil problem will be very hard to eradicate,” Mr. Zhang said.

Since March 20, the Business Daily has published a series of reports on “gutter oil.” With tips from insiders, Business Daily reporters listed a distribution map of more than 10 gutter oil processing sites. The behavior of officials from departments such as the Zhengzhou Food and Drug Administration, the Administration for Industry and Commerce, and the Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau, who inspected the oil refining sites on site but only inspected without shutting them down, also sparked social controversy.

In the eyes of insiders, the reason “gutter oil” has not been brought down after so many years of crackdowns is that, apart from being profitable, government supervision has been ineffective. “If the government could act firmly and severely crack down on those illegally collecting, reselling, and refining swill oil, this kind of thing would have disappeared long ago, and the public's cooking oil would have been safe long ago.”

On March 31, Zhengzhou issued an emergency notice to further strengthen the supervision and management of “gutter oil.” Multiple departments including industry and commerce, quality supervision, environmental protection, drug supervision, health, and public security carried out joint law enforcement to jointly tackle gutter oil, and also published a reporting hotline to make it easier for residents to report gutter oil.

More than 10 days have passed. How is the gutter oil governance going?

Yesterday, a reporter called the reporting hotline, and a staff member said she was on duty and not very clear about the situation. The reporter called Deputy Director He, who said he was in Chengdu conducting research, studying, and inspecting the situation of gutter oil governance, and was not very clear about the situation in Zhengzhou.