China’s first enterprise alliance standard Safety Standard of Feeding Bottles for Infants and Young Children was released on April 2, 2014. This standard was compiled by China Toy Association as well as some large domestic and foreign feeding-bottle manufacturers and authoritative testing institutes. The new standard is the first feeding-bottle industrial safety standard in China.
This enterprise alliance standard references relevant national sanitary standards and the national standards of relevant products and materials in China. The product safety indexes mainly reference EU standards as well as the standards of the USA, Japan and Taiwan. It primarily stipulates the safety requirements on physical and chemical performance of the product.
China’s standard is more detailed than the EU standard
The safety indexes stipulated in the new standard include chemical performance indexes like component/ingredient list, detachable parts, protrusion, BPA release, heavy metal migration volume. Meanwhile, new indexes like sanitary requirements on raw materials, conformational strength, content and testing method of phthalates not included in EU standards are also added in this new standard. Moreover, there are strict requirements on product labeling and warning information. The new standard even stipulates the font and permissible expressions of product labels. The quality assurance logo of “Safety Commitment Brand” is being simultaneously released with the new standard, and enterprises conforming to this standard can bear the logo on their product packages.
How to implement this new standard without any compulsory obligations on industry to comply?
Different from national, local and industrial standards, the new standard is non-compulsory; however we can expect that this standard will in the future be made a mandatory requirement. Governmental or enterprise spot check will also be conducted. More than 10 domestic and foreign key enterprises in feeding bottle industry were involved in the formulation of this new standard. The market share occupied by these enterprises represents 60-70%. Therefore in future the quality and safety of the majority of products on the market will be guaranteed.
