The evolution of China’s food control system and its implications for a future EU-China food trade relationship

Over the years, Europe and China have signed sectoral agreements which provides for reinforced their cooperation on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) controls and supply chain security. However, many trade barriers relating to safety issues, standardization and traceability (including fraud) in agri-food products persist and hamper trade predictability. In addition, there is a need contribute to the prevention of major food safety crisis throughout the whole food chain, to meet consumer expectations for international standards.Starting from these premises, the main objective of this paper is to explore the China’s food control system as a case study to examine the Chinese way of combating food safety risks. The European experience will be used as a comparison to check the possibility of a future and effective EU-China food safety trade relationships.