Food is food to safety first.
"Eating safely and eating healthily" has become the most important issue that people pay attention to when selecting and buying food.
What to rely on to choose?
Food labels.
Traditional food labels have limited capacity, and consumers do not have comprehensive access to health and nutrition information.
For the elderly, visually impaired people and other groups, it is difficult to read the densely packed small characters.
At present, digital transformation is quietly changing people's consumption patterns, and digital labels have emerged.
Digital tags hide big information
What is a digital label?
Walking into a fresh food supermarket in Beijing, a counter marked with "digital label products" caught the reporter's attention.
Picking up a certain brand of coffee drink on the counter, the reporter saw that in addition to the traditional food label, there was also an obvious QR code label attached to the bottle, with the words "digital label" next to it.
When the reporter scanned the QR code, richer information immediately popped up on his mobile phone: the product's outer packaging pictures, product name, brand, category, net content, specifications, nutritional ingredients, company profile, product advertising video, etc., all at a glance.
By continuously zooming in on the page with two fingers, the information becomes clearer and more intuitive.
"Food digital labels are like an 'electronic ID card' for food." Li Ning, director of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, explained, "It can make up for the problems of traditional food labels such as small fonts, dense line spacing, and limited information, and is more consistent with Green development concept. Functions such as voice recognition and video explanation can also meet the reading needs of different consumers, greatly improving the experience and convenience of consumers in obtaining information."
In order to expand the display format of food labels, support the needs of innovative development of food production enterprises, and provide convenience for consumers to read food labels, the National Health Commission recently joined forces with the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, China Food Industry Association, Beijing Municipal Health Commission, and China The Article Coding Center and other units jointly carried out pilot projects for food digital labels, organized relevant food production enterprises, and carried out a series of tasks such as digital label application research, industry research, and product pilots.
At present, more than 40 products from more than 20 companies have joined the pilot work of digital labeling, covering major food categories such as dairy products, beverages, packaged drinking water, convenience foods, meat products, vegetable oils, and candies.
Some products are already on sale, and other products will enter the market in the near future.
In addition, compared with traditional labels, digital labels are more low-carbon and environmentally friendly, can reduce the consumption of ink and paper, and meet the overall requirements of resource conservation. Therefore, they are suitable to be applied to food products with large packaging consumption, such as beverages.
Will digital labels completely replace traditional food labels?
Zhu Lei, director of the Standards Center of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, believes that from the perspective of risk management and sustainable development, it is the future development trend for digital labels to replace some functions of existing food labels, but it will still take a long time to completely replace physical labels. cycle, and should meet the following conditions: 1. Improve consumers’ recognition of digital labels.
Through pilots and the official application of digital labels in the future, consumers will gradually understand digital labels and develop reading habits.
Second, food companies are required to use digital labels as normal label carriers and use them in accordance with standard requirements in food production.
Third, digital labels must meet the regulatory needs of market regulatory authorities for food labels and improve the regulatory efficiency of digital label applications.
"Generally speaking, compared with traditional food labels, digital labels can play a greater role in consumers' access to information, food production and operation, and market supervision, and have very broad application prospects, but to achieve this The goal requires joint efforts from all parties," Zhu Lei added.
The two-way rush between production and consumption
What does the application of digital labels mean to food production and operation enterprises?
Zhou Jingjing, the person in charge of a fresh food supermarket, summed it up in one word: “going in both directions.”
"Food production and operation enterprises are paying more and more attention to the experience brought by 'digitalization'. Consumers' demand for transparent product information is a rigid need for enterprises. Enterprises can use digital labels to display all information on the entire chain of R&D, production and sales to Consumers, expand communication channels with consumers and form good interactions." Zhou Jingjing said, "In addition, for enterprises, digital labels can also help label reading of products sold through online platform channels and solve the problem of online food label information sales. Issues with incomplete or inaccurate presentation.”
Li Yu, chief engineer of the China Food Industry Association, said in an interview that digital labels make the way food labels display information more flexible. In the actual implementation of digital labels, companies can count the number of times consumers scan digital labels, which is useful for companies to understand a product. Popularity with consumers helps.
From the perspective of the company's own operations and management, the application of digital labels can also help improve the efficiency and accuracy of the company's food label management work.
"Digital labels are easy to maintain, and can also effectively save food companies' human and material investment in label design, printing, and review, reduce food label maintenance and adjustment costs, manage label information through information technology, and enhance the timeliness of related management." Li Yu said.
Fan Yongxiang, deputy director of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, said that as the food digital label pilot work continues to deepen, consumers will become more accepting of digital labels.
It is believed that more and more companies will use digital labels to display product information, and more companies are welcome to join the pilot work on food digital labels.
So, what message should companies use food labels to convey?
What should consumers pay attention to when buying food?
"Food labels mainly contain two types of information, mandatory information and recommended information. For example, food name, ingredient list, net content, specifications, production date, shelf life, storage conditions, production license number, standard code, as well as producer and sales The name, address, contact information, etc. of the applicant are all mandatory information." Li Ning introduced.
Consumers should not only develop the habit of reading labels, but also "understand" labels.
To this end, Li Ning recommends:
1. Pay attention to the product name, which can directly reflect the attributes of the food.
For example, when buying yogurt, if the product name is fermented milk, the product must be made from milk and milk powder through fermentation, and no other ingredients can be added.
If the product name is flavored fermented milk, then the product can add other ingredients such as sugar, fruits, vegetables, and grains.
2. Pay attention to the ingredient list.
The ingredients list is marked in descending order from the most to the least amount of ingredients, that is, the ingredient with the most amount is listed first.
3. Pay attention to the date, not only the production date, but also the shelf life, which should be combined with the storage conditions.
4. Pay attention to the nutritional information table, and consumers should choose suitable foods based on their own health conditions.
In addition, consumers should also pay attention to information such as unsuitable groups and allergens.
Promotion of digital labels must be reasonable and compliant
Currently, many countries and regions are promoting and trying digital tags, but they are still in their infancy.
For example, Japan mainly uses digital labels to supplement and improve physical label information, and relevant Japanese departments are also trying to formulate laws and regulations.
The EU allows wine products to provide ingredient list information through digital labels, and some companies also hope to provide nutritional information through digital labels.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission has established a working group on digital labels to discuss the standardization of digital labels.
The pilot work on food digital labeling carried out by our country can be said to be at the forefront of the world.
"Carrying out the practice of food digital labeling can provide Chinese experience for the formulation of future international standards and gain certain first-mover advantages for our country's food companies in international trade," Li Yu said.
Sun Baoguo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told reporters that food labels bear multiple functions such as ensuring food safety, conveying food information, and promoting food products. However, Chinese consumers' awareness of food labels is still insufficient, and the management of food labels also needs to be further improved.
In order to ensure that digital labels can truly and accurately convey food label information to consumers, the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center is organizing the revision of the "National Food Safety Standards for Prepackaged Food Labeling General Principles" (GB7718), and plans to officially use digital labels as recommended labeling content. Include it within the scope of national food safety standards, clarify its application principles, requirements and display content, ensure the authenticity and standardization of information displayed on digital labels, provide technical basis for food production, operation and market supervision, and better serve people's health and industry innovation and development .
“In addition to digital labels, the newly revised national food safety standards have improved the requirements for food dates, food claims, nutrition labels, etc., and are in line with the general requirements of green sustainable development and anti-food waste, and have a scientific management of food labels in our country. It is of great significance." said Chen Junshi, general consultant of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Currently, the International Article Coding Organization is promoting the migration of article coding carriers from one-dimensional codes to two-dimensional codes, advocating that all fields fully implement customized identification and information applications of two-dimensional codes on the basis of unified commodity coding.
Through functions such as automatic identification, transmission and exchange of information, it meets the practical needs of settlement logistics, business supervision, and consumers' inquiries for more information.
At the same time, the China Article Coding Center has customized a unified platform for digital label applications. When pilot companies design digital label display pages, they can choose the company's own platform or the unified platform customized by the coding center to maintain the company's product information in accordance with digital label requirements. The system It can also automatically generate product QR codes that comply with national standards to help enterprises manage and use digital labels.
"The China Article Coding Center has completed the construction of a special system for food digital labels. In the next step, based on the application of digital labels, we will continue to expand applications in food traceability, online settlement, digital transformation, and sustainable development capacity building. , to better meet the needs of enterprises." said Li Jianhui, chief engineer of China Article Coding Center.
(Our reporter Li Chunjian)