August 6th, journalist received the notification issued by the Provincial Food and Drug Administration, to strengthening the tea quality and safety supervision. The notification emphasizes that the tea manufacturers are required to follow the “Food additives use standards” regulation. The tea manufacture process is not allowed to use any additives, and the non-food raw materials are not allowed to produce tea.
To ensure the quality and safety of the tea, the notification requires tea manufactures to strictly control the input and output of the raw materials. And the manufactures have to earnestly carry out the inspection and the recording of the incoming of the raw materials. If necessary, they have to test the pesticide residue, pollutants, and colorants of the raw materials. It includes the possible lead chrome green, malachite green, Sudan Red G and other non-food raw material.
The raw materials purchased from outside companies, the tea manufacturers should build the supply list. The relatively stable supply sources need to evaluate regularly. To provide stringent requirements for the suppliers or upstream tea planters. It is focused on pesticide residue, heavy metal pollutants. It encourages the companies to build the base for the raw materials used for tea and strictly control the agricultural inputs in the tea planting process. It is prohibited to use the pesticides that are banned by the country.
Notification requires that the tea manufactures have to follow the label standard, and apply the “five – not allowed”: not allowed to mark the wrong the implemented product standards, quality levels; not allowed to produce tea products with incomplete information with no label, or not complete label; not allowed to use the faked production date; not allowed to use faked planted site or incomplete information; not allowed to use fake description such as handmake, wild, stored age or others.
Tea manufacturers has to follow the standards of the food and drug administration and the company, conducting inspection. If the product fails the inspection, it should not be sold. If the company doesn’t have the ability to conduct the inspection, they have to contract other food inspection agents that have the qualification to conduct the inspection. Once the lead, pesticide residue and others contained in the tea have been found not meeting the standard, or the colorants, non-food raw materials have been detected, the company should stop production and investigate for the reason, recall the productions, and notify the local Food and Drug Administration. To build and complete the tea manufacturers food safety credit profile, encourage the legal production, integrity management, and health of the industry.