China’s State Administration for Market Supervision has recently announced that it will stop testing chilled and frozen foods for COVID-19 with effect from 8 January.
The authority will also no longer require all imported chilled and frozen foods to enter centralised warehouses for disinfection and testing before they reach the domestic market.
China is probably the only country in the world that had enacted such regulation on testing of food products for Covid-19 tracing, as it suspected that some products were contaminated during the packaging process or while it was transported from the origin country to the mainland.
China’s meat trade has welcomed the imminent end of testing and disinfecting chilled and frozen foods for the virus more than 2 years after Beijing started the controversial practice, adding substantial costs to the trade.
The dropping of measures followed a similar announcement from the customs authority on 28 December that it will stop testing cold-chain food arriving at the country’s ports.
China started testing chilled and frozen food imports for the virus in June 2020 after an outbreak of the disease in a wholesale market in Beijing led authorities to believe the virus had spread from imported produce. Six months later, Beijing recommended testing on ambient products too, even as scientists said that the risk of coronavirus infection through contact with contaminated surfaces was low.
