China Proposes Major Overhaul of Food Safety Law

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) on 10 October released a draft revision of the Food Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China for public comment, launching the most significant overhaul of the law since its comprehensive amendment in 2015. The consultation period runs until 10 November 2026.

According to Xinhua, the draft expands the law from 154 to 191 articles, adding 37 new provisions and revising 93. The changes span five broad areas: tightening entity responsibility, strengthening oversight of key sectors, optimizing management systems, promoting “smart regulation” through artificial intelligence, and improving the legal liability regime.

Background

The current Food Safety Law was enacted in 2009 and comprehensively revised in 2015. SAMR’s guiding principle is General Secretary Xi Jinping’s “Four Strictest” directive on food safety — strictest standards, strictest regulation, strictest penalties, and strictest accountability.

The revision responds to problems that have emerged with rapid economic and social change, including the growth of online food delivery and livestream food sales, cross-border e-commerce, new forms of food additives, and the proliferation of for-profit “professional claimants” who buy products in order to file complaints.

“As the economy and society have developed in recent years, food safety work faces new problems, new tasks and new challenges,” the head of SAMR’s Food Coordination Department said in a Q&A with Xinhua.

Key Changes

Tightening entity responsibility. Food producers, operators, and online food trading platform operators would be required to appoint a food safety director and a food safety officer, with defined duties and training. Food producers would have to keep a production process control record. Postal and express delivery firms would be required to implement real-name acceptance, inspection upon receipt, and machine security screening.

New sector-specific sub-sections. The draft adds two dedicated chapters. A “School Food Safety” section establishes a principal (or kindergarten director) responsibility system and a shared-meal, or companion-dining, system for primary and secondary schools and kindergartens. A “Online Food Operations” section adopts tiered filing management and clarifies the responsibilities of platforms, livestream room operators, and livestream marketers, including requiring platforms to set up a branch or office in each provincial-level region where they operate.

Optimizing management systems. Risk monitoring would extend to food additives and food-related products. Infant complementary foods would be added to special food regulation under a filing regime. Food labeling and commercial advertising would be standardized, with false or misleading claims strictly prohibited, and a new filing system introduced for food additive sales.

Smart regulation. The draft promotes “Internet + AI” regulation. Food enterprises would be required to install monitoring equipment at key risk points and connect real-time video to county-level and above market regulation information systems. Regulators would gain authority for non-on-site inspection using internet-of-things monitoring and video patrols, and online catering providers would have to livestream their food preparation publicly — the “bright kitchen, transparent stove” approach.

“From the perspective of actual regulatory resource allocation, the traditional ‘human-sea tactic’ regulatory approach can no longer match the food industry’s characteristics of large volume, scattered distribution, and endlessly emerging new business forms,” CCTV reported, quoting experts on the rationale for smart regulation.

Legal liability. The draft sets differentiated penalty ranges by type of violation, strictly applies “penalty to the person” for intentional, egregious, or seriously consequential violations, and introduces a food safety credit management system with cross-departmental discredit punishment.

Curbing Abusive Claims

Among the most consequential changes is a reform of punitive damages. The draft narrows the subject entitled to claim punitive damages from “consumers” to “consumers purchasing for life consumption needs,” excluding professional or malicious claimants who buy for non-life-consumption purposes. It also adds a provision allowing the People’s Procuratorate to seek punitive damages in civil public interest litigation where conduct harms public social interests.

These changes follow a years-long effort to rein in abusive claims. According to 21st Century Business Herald, Shanghai’s consumer council found that professional claimants filed 246,000 complaints in a single year, with a single “no-license cucumber salad” grievance used to demand compensation from 1,372 restaurants. In October 2025, a final court ruling in the Rainbow Planet v. Wang Hai case defined professional anti-counterfeiting conduct as infringement.

Analysis

The revision reflects a deliberate shift in regulatory philosophy. By embedding AI and video monitoring into the law, Beijing is signaling that it sees technology as the answer to a food industry too large and dispersed for traditional inspection. The “bright kitchen” live-streaming requirement, in particular, transfers monitoring power from inspectors to consumers.

The punitive damages reform cuts in a different direction. It marks a clear policy choice to prioritize ordinary consumers and lawful businesses over a professional-claimant industry that regulators argue has become a profit-seeking enterprise rather than a consumer-protection service.

At the same time, the expanded scope of liability — including personal penalties for responsible individuals and procuratorial public interest litigation — broadens the state’s enforcement reach, even as it narrows one private channel of redress.

What’s Next

SAMR will refine the draft based on public feedback and accelerate the legislative process for enactment. The comment period closes on 10 November 2026. Key questions to watch include how platforms will meet the provincial-branch requirement, how the AI monitoring mandate will be funded and enforced for small businesses, and whether the narrowed punitive damages standard leaves genuine consumers adequately protected.