China Customs Helps Import Pork and Other Meat Products

According to the customs statistics, from January to November 2019, China’s import of meat products (including entrails) totaled 5,485,000 tons, up 42% year-on-year; therein, pork reached 1,838,000 tons and pork entrails 999,000 tons, respectively up 66% and 3.5% year-on-year. In November alone, the import of meat and entrails reached 644,000 tons, up 82% year-on-year

In support of importing pork and other meat products, China Customs has since 2019 provided market access for meat products made in 16 more countries and increased the variety of accessible meat products from 21 countries of origin, with pork imported from 20 countries. On the basis of risk analysis, the Customs provided better clearance services such as dynamically adjusting the inspection ratio over import meat products to reduce clearance cost and duration of time. Particularly, pork importers could apply for prior release based on tax guarantee.   

Meanwhile, China Customs took stricter measures to prevent epidemic diseases such as African swine fever, including risk warning and quarantine control. Since 2019, over 10 expert groups have been stationed abroad to assess the food safety management of relevant countries of origin, making field inspection over the registered exporters, so as to ensure quality control at the import sources. For the meat products with quality problems, the Customs not only prohibits them from entry but also online publishes their details including product variety, external producer and domestic importer; for the external producers with serious misconduct, the Customs suspends their supply qualification, personnel visas and also asks local government agencies to make relevant rectification.   

Besides, China Customs helped enterprises in the import of breeding pigs by promoting the quarantine access with pre-inspection at abroad and strict entry quarantine, so as to secure domestic supply of live pigs.

From January 1, 2020, China Customs will reduce the provisional import duty on frozen pork.

Related inspection and quarantine requirements can be found on the website of GACC or contact us for consultation.