On November 4, 2017, the newly revised “Standardization Law of the People's Republic of China” was approved on the 30th Meeting of the Twelfth Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, president Xi Jinping signed the Presidential Decree No. 78 to publish it. The revised standardization law will come into effect from January 1, 2018. Foodmate conducted interpretation and analysis on the revised contents of this time for professional reference.
I The legal status of group standard has been defined
The classification of standard of our country was adjusted in this revision. Group standards were added on the basis of national standards, industry standards, local standards, enterprise standards.
With regard to the adoption of group standards, the revised standardization law defines that: group standards are adopted by the members of the group through agreement or voluntarily adopted by the community in accordance with the provisions of the group. But at present, there are also group standards formulated by a few associations are not allowed to be used at will. Thus, in the use of group standards, the enterprises need to pay attention to the issuance agency of this group standard, and know whether there are restrictive provisions in the administrative measures of group standard issued by this agency, and adopt after obtaining the approval if necessary.
II The mandatory industry standards and local standards has been cancelled
The revision defines the scope of mandatory standards: only mandatory national standards are allowed to be formulated, and the mandatory industry standards and mandatory local standards that being existed have been canceled. At the same time, the state is also carrying out standard clean-up and consolidation, of which many mandatory standards have been abolished and transformed.
It is worth mentioning that this revision also defines that mandatory national standards are issued through the approval of State Council or issued through authorization of State Council. In addition, according to Paragraph 5 of Article 10 of the revised Standardization Law: "Where there are provisions in respect to mandatory standard in laws and administrative regulations and the State Council's decision, such provisions shall be followed”. Therefore, the issuance and implementation of the current local food safety standards will not be affected .
III The articles of immediate abolition has been deleted
Foodmate noticed that this revision deleted the Article 6 of the former Standardization Law regarding the articles of immediate abolition.
Some standard issuance units, for the moment, have inconsistent understanding on the immediate abolition. Some standards shall be abolished since the issuance date of announcement, instead of abolishing the previous standards after the implementation of the standards, moreover, the corresponding national standards of some standards have already been issued and implemented before the issuance of abolition of some standards.
On the other hand, from the reply Ministry of Commerce's public comment, the Ministry of Commerce thought that the dried meat floss industry standard shall be abolished when the corresponding national standards are issued, and there is no description like “abolished from the date of the announcement” in No.20 announcement.
In conclusion, can we take it as agreed that: in order to determine whether the standard is abolished or not, we only need to check the abolishment and review announcement of the issuance unit of relevant standard instead of checking the issuance of the corresponding national standard which can cause the immediate abolition? It is unclear of the specific reasons for the deletion of this Article.
IV The free publicity of mandatory standard text has been defined, and the State promotes the free publicity of recommended standard text
Article 17 of the revised Standardization Law clearly defines that: mandatory standard texts shall be made public to the public for free. The state promotes free publication of recommended standard texts to the public.
In February 2017, the Office of the State Council Standardization Coordination and Inter-ministerial Joint Conference printed and distributed the “Implementation plan about promoting the public of national standards” The plan clearly defined that the texts of recommended national standards shall be made to the public by stages. All the national standards will be basically made to public freely by 2020.
