In response to consumers' feedback that the production date and shelf life of prepackaged food (including food additives) are "difficult to find, unclear and difficult to calculate", recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the "Announcement on Encouraging Food Enterprises to Optimize the Production Date and Shelf Life Label Identification of Prepackaged Food" (hereinafter referred to as the "Announcement") to promote food enterprises to actively take targeted improvement measures to facilitate consumers' clear identification.
The Announcement encourages
- Food enterprises should use words, numbers, and symbols with a minimum height of not less than 3 mm and a ratio of height to width of no more than 3:1;
- It is clearly marked in the form of a clear contrast between the background color and the date color such as black characters on a white background;
- Improve the technology and equipment of inkjet coding and printing to ensure that the annotated content is long-lasting and clear.
The Announcement encourages
- Food enterprises clearly mark the expiration date of the shelf life in the order of year, month and day;
- Where there are multiple pieces of single-piece pre-packaged food in the same pre-package, the expiration date of the shelf life of the single-piece pre-packaged food that expires at the earliest is marked on the outer packaging, or the expiration date of the shelf life of each single-piece pre-packaged food is marked on the outer packaging;
- For pre-packaged food produced by sub-packaging, the expiration date of the shelf life of the pre-packaged food to be sub-packaged shall be marked.
How to mark it exactly
A picture to read
Source/People's Daily Online