The State Food and Drug Administration launches a special action for cosmetics
Rectify the problem of online sales to ensure the safety of public makeup
□ Our reporter Wan Jing
Recently, the National Medical Products Administration issued a notice stating that from October 2021 to October 2022, the National Medical Products Administration will launch a special action for cosmetics "online net and offline clean source".
The action will focus on rectifying prominent problems in online sales, strengthen the main responsibility of cosmetics e-commerce operators, standardize the order of online cosmetics sales, and ensure the safety of public makeup.
A reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" learned that China's cosmetics supervision will usher in a new pattern in 2021, and relevant functional departments will further strengthen the supervision of the cosmetics market.
On January 1 this year, the "Regulations on Supervision and Administration of Cosmetics" was formally implemented.
Subsequently, the "Administrative Measures for the Registration of Cosmetics", the "Administrative Regulations on the Registration of New Cosmetic Raw Materials", and the "Administrative Regulations on the Administration of the Registration of Cosmetics" and other supporting regulatory documents have been issued and implemented to provide a more suitable environment for the high-quality development of the cosmetics industry.
Clarify e-commerce platform responsibilities
Supervise the implementation of centralized inspections
It is understood that the primary focus of this special operation is to clean up and rectify unregistered or unfiled cosmetics, fraudulent use of other people's registration certificates, and have been requested to stop operating cosmetics.
In recent years, with the development of the national economy and the improvement of people's living standards, China's cosmetics industry has continued to grow and develop driven by consumer demand.
At present, there are more than 5,400 cosmetics-licensed manufacturers, more than 87,000 registered entities of various types of cosmetics, and nearly 1.6 million valid registered and registered products. China has become the world's second largest consumer market for cosmetics.
The "Administrative Measures for the Registration and Filing of Cosmetics" that came into effect on May 1 this year clarified that prior to the listing or import of ordinary cosmetics, the filing person shall complete the filing after submitting the filing materials through the information service platform in accordance with the requirements of the State Drug Administration.
According to the relevant person in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration, informative filing has not reduced the requirements for product safety while optimizing filing procedures and facilitating product listing.
The State Food and Drug Administration will strengthen interim and ex-post supervision measures to organize post-filing supervision and inspection of the filing materials submitted by the filing person. If problems are found, they will follow the new regulations and related supporting regulations to order corrections, suspension of sales, and cancellations in accordance with the law. Corresponding measures such as filing; any violations of laws and regulations, such as submitting false filing materials, shall be investigated and punished severely in accordance with the law.
This special action has clarified the responsibilities of e-commerce platforms that sell cosmetics.
According to the requirements of the State Drug Administration, the drug regulatory authorities of all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) shall supervise and urge the operators of cosmetics e-commerce platforms within their administrative regions to conduct centralized inspections of the cosmetics sold on their platforms. For cosmetics that violate the regulations, the platform operators shall Take necessary measures such as deleting, blocking, and disconnecting links in accordance with the law or in accordance with the platform service agreement and transaction rules to stop them in a timely manner.
Clean up and rectify label content
Guide the public to use it correctly
The reporter learned that this special action will also focus on cleaning up and rectifying the cosmetics that are declared illegally on the label, including the label content is inconsistent with the registration or filing information, false or misleading, expressly implying medical effects, and illegal claims of cosmeceuticals, stem cells, acid cleaning, etc. Medical skin care products, etc.
Since the beginning of this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation and the State Food and Drug Administration have issued statements and popular science articles on their official websites to guide the public to correctly understand the so-called "cosmetics, stem cells, acid cleaning, and medical skin care products."
In August this year, the State Administration of Market Supervision stated that advertisements promoting stem cell therapy for anti-aging, anti-cancer, and beauty are all false and illegal advertisements.
The State Food and Drug Administration published an article on its official website that stem cell cosmetics are pseudo-concepts. Cosmetics are daily-use chemical industrial products for the purpose of cleaning, protecting, beautifying, and modifying. They have no medical effect, so there is no “medical cosmetics”. Most of the stem cell technology in the medical field is still in the clinical research stage.
In the "List of Used Cosmetic Raw Materials" revised and released by the State Food and Drug Administration in 2021, cosmetic raw materials with names containing "stem cells" are not included.
The State Food and Drug Administration has not registered or filed any cosmetic raw materials related to stem cells.
In early June of this year, the State Food and Drug Administration issued the "Administrative Measures on Cosmetics Labeling", requiring cosmetics labels to prohibit labeling or claiming in the following ways: including the use of medical terms, names of medical celebrities, words describing medical effects and effects, or approved drugs The name expressly or implies that the product has a medical effect; the use of false, exaggerated, and absolute words to describe falsely or misleadingly; the use of trademarks, patterns, font color size, color difference, homophonic or suggestive words, letters, Chinese pinyin, Numbers, symbols, etc. imply medical effects or make false claims.
The measures will be formally implemented on May 1, 2022.
Liu Junhai, a professor at the School of Law of Renmin University of China, pointed out that, unlike drugs and medical devices, which are mainly selected and used by professionals, as daily fast-moving consumer goods, cosmetics are mainly chosen by consumers.
Product labels are the main way to convey basic product information, attribute characteristics, efficacy claims and safety warnings to consumers. Legal and accurate labeling is a necessary guarantee to ensure that consumers use products correctly, reasonably and safely.
Therefore, strengthening the management of cosmetics labels is an important component of strengthening cosmetics safety supervision.
Pay attention to quality and safety risks
Prevent children from eating and misusing
Cosmetics are consumer goods that meet people's needs for beauty. They directly affect the human body, and their quality is related to the health of the people.
To this end, the special action will also clean up and rectify cosmetics that have quality and safety risks, including those that are illegally added, produced with prohibited raw materials, and produced with restricted ingredients that exceed the scope or limit.
The health and safety of children is the focus of attention of the whole society.
It is worth noting that under the new cosmetics supervision pattern, China has strengthened the standards and supervision of the production, operation and sales of children's cosmetics.
For example, the "Administrative Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Cosmetics Production and Operation" to be formally implemented on January 1 next year will clarify the principles for the classification of cosmetics production license items and highlight the special production conditions that should be available for children's skin care and eye skin care cosmetics.
This is China's first departmental regulation specifically for the production and management of cosmetics.
On October 8, the State Food and Drug Administration issued the "Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Children's Cosmetics", which is a normative document formulated specifically for the supervision of children's cosmetics in China.
In this document, strict standards are drawn out for the labeling requirements of children's cosmetics. Children's cosmetics should be marked with the children's cosmetics mark prescribed by the State Food and Drug Administration on the display surface of the sales package.
Non-children’s cosmetics shall not be marked with the children’s cosmetics logo.
Children’s cosmetics should be guided by "Caution" or "Warning", and warning words such as "should be used under adult supervision" should be marked on the visible side of the sales package.
In order to prevent children from eating by mistake, regulations require that children’s cosmetics labels must not be marked with words such as “food grade”, “edible”, or patterns related to food.
Cosmetic registrants, record holders, and entrusted manufacturing enterprises shall take measures to avoid confusion between the properties, smell, and appearance of children's cosmetics with food, medicines and other products, and to prevent accidental ingestion and misuse.
At the beginning of this year, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the State Administration of Market Supervision, and the State Food and Drug Administration jointly issued 15 typical cases of special actions to implement the “four strictest” requirements for food and drug safety, which fully reflects the power of China's increased enforcement of cosmetics supervision.
The special action lasted from September 2019 to December 2020. The drug regulatory authority investigated and handled 107,700 illegal cases in the fields of drugs, cosmetics and medical devices, and fined 1.84 billion yuan.
Recently, the State Food and Drug Administration has decided to organize a nationwide special campaign for cosmetics "Online Net and Offline Cleanup" from October 2021 to October 2022.
It is understood that this special operation was carried out in two phases.
October 2021 to February 2022 is the self-examination phase.
The food and drug regulatory departments of various regions shall organize cosmetics e-commerce operators in their administrative areas to carry out a comprehensive self-inspection, and promptly take corrective measures for problems found in the self-inspection stage.
From March 2022 to September 2022, in response to the key rectification issues of this special action, the drug supervision and administration departments of various provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) carried out supervision and inspection of cosmetics e-commerce operators in their respective administrative regions.
The problems found in the supervision and inspection and the inspection clues found in the self-inspection and rectification stage shall be traced to the source, and the registrants, filing persons, entrusted production enterprises and operators involved in illegal cosmetics shall be investigated and dealt with in accordance with the law.
At the same time, the departments responsible for drug supervision and administration are encouraged to use technical means to carry out network monitoring, improve the pertinence and targeting of special actions through data retrieval, big data screening, etc., and investigate and deal with illegal clues found in network monitoring according to law, involving trans-regional In case of verification, the verification clues shall be forwarded in time.