Abstract:

In order to understand the influence of U.S. food labeling technical trade measures on Chinese food export, we summarized U.S. food labeling management systems and the composition of technical trade measures and statistically analyzed the cases of unqualified food labeling in Chinese food export detained by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during 2003 to 2007 via three aspects of unqualified batch, reason and food species. The results showed that Chinese unqualified food labeling batches accounted for 8.78％ of the whole detained products, the food label inspection revealed several striking and crucial issues like unqualified additives, nutrition labeling and information labeling problems, and seven species of food contributed to 87.6％ of  total unqualified labeling food export to U.S.. According to these results, we conclude that U.S. food labeling technical trade measures have a great impact on Chinese export food trade and positive countermeasures should be taken by Chinese governments, associations, chambers of commerce and industries.

Key words: food labeling, technical trade measure, impact