China’s market supervision authority State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) recently published its half-yearly food safety report on various commonly consumed food products in the market.
This half-yearly report covered the first half of 2025, and involved the authorities conducting checks on over 2.6 million products in the market.
Of these 2.6 million checks, 2.61% were found to have failed food safety inspections – which may seem like a small percentage but unfortunately also equates to almost 68,000 unsafe items detected on the market, suggesting even more such items that were not detected.
Compared to the results of the previous report from 2024, the 2.61% percentage was slightly lower than 2.95% previously – but a closer look at the data for major high-consumption categories reveals some disturbing trends.
High-consumption food item failure rates
| Category | H1 2025 failure rate | H2 2024 failure rate |
|---|---|---|
| Processed grains | 0.37% | 0.67% |
| Edible oils | 0.46% | 0.96% |
| Meat products | 1.04% | 0.87% |
| Eggs | 2.41% | 0.15% |
| Dairy | 0.03% | 0.13% |
According to SAMR data, processed grains, edible oils and dairy products saw drops in failure rates, but meat products and eggs have seen worrying increases.
“These categories aside, failure rates for fruits (5.13%), vegetables (4.82%) and seafood (4.2%) items have been of higher concern due to being higher than the average 2.61% rate,” the agency stated via a formal statement.
“We have analysed the trends and found that 22 food categories have seen an improvement, three categories (canned foods, cocoa, roast coffee) have remained the same, but 16 categories such as fruit, eggs and health foods (e.g. formula) have seen poorer performances.”
Food safety failure factors
SAMR checks are conducted across a wide range of potential food safety risks from microbes to heavy metals, and this year the top contaminant of concern has again been found to be pesticides.
2025 China stop food safety inspection failures
| Contaminant / Issue | Percentage of samples |
|---|---|
| Pesticide residues | 47.81% |
| Excessive food additives | 17.93% |
| Organic substances (e.g. PCBs) | 10.50% |
| Microbes | 9.77% |
| Veterinary drugs | 6.23% |
| Substandard quality | 3.94% |
| Heavy metals | 3.27% |
The most concerning trend among the above factors is the rapid rise in pesticide contamination cases – this now makes up more than 47% compared to 39.9% in the previous report.
Unfortunately, this may indicate that pesticide use in China may again be shifting towards the worrying excessive usage often seen in past decades, which the government worked hard to cut down on due to the negative reputational impacts – but may now be reemerging in the light of economic downturns and high input cost pressures.
A similar pattern also looks to be emerging in terms of the use of food additives – this also saw an increase in excessive usage to 17.93% this year compared to 14.99% previously, and the same economically-driven factors are likely to apply here as manufacturers, especially small firms, would be driven to increase the shelf life and costs of their products despite the risks.
As such, although the Chinese government may have managed to boost China’s food safety standards and reputation with some success over the recent past, it is likely that much more effort needs to be put in to see sustainable results that can withstand the test of monetary pressures.
“All market supervision departments are transparently publishing the results of these inspections and have promptly disposals of the offending products in accordance with regulations, in order to control food safety risks,” said SAMR.
Public pressure is on
In light of these findings and public pressure, the agency has also solicited public opinions to improve food safety inspections in the country.
“In order to further improve the quality of food safety monitoring and inspections in China, we have requested suggestions from the public,” SAMR stated in a separate statement.
“These suggestions will be used to formulate a better 2026 food safety inspection plan rooted in science and practicality.”
In the suggestion form, individuals have to fill out a table containing information on the target product along with sampling steps, whether the inspection should be planned or a spot check, reasoning for inspection, and so on.
