On August 23 , 2024 , the Japanese Cabinet Office issued Cabinet Office Order No. 71 to revise food labeling standards . The revision mainly involves the functional food labeling system, with the purpose of avoiding the recurrence of harmful incidents related to Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s red yeast products . The main contents include:

　　( 1 ) Added matters for functional food applicators to comply with. If a functional food business operator, as the applicant, declares "specific health purpose" based on the added functional ingredients, a supplementary report must be made to the Commissioner of the Consumer Affairs Agency when new scientific evidence is available; for tablets and capsules, For functional foods, their manufacturing management and quality management processes should comply with GMP standards; if consumers are suspected of suffering health damage after ingesting functional foods, even if the causal relationship with the food is not clear, operators need to rely on health damage information and doctors Diagnosis urgently reports relevant information to the administrative agency; after successful declaration of functional food, operators should conduct self-evaluation every year on whether the functional ingredients can achieve the specific health purpose claimed on the label, and report the evaluation results to the Commissioner of the Consumer Agency;

　　( 2 ) Modify the labeling requirements for functional foods. Because functional foods are different from specific health foods and pharmaceuticals in terms of functionality and safety, their labels must indicate the interaction with pharmaceuticals and other products and precautions to prevent excessive intake; in addition, functional food labels also need to include Basic information of food-related operators such as the name and contact information of the food operator, information on safety and functional basis, production and quality management information, health hazard information collection system and other necessary matters should be marked;

　　( 3 ) The review period for newly declared functional ingredient information is changed from the current 60 working days to 120 working days, etc. The effective date of this amendment is September 1 , 2024 .

　　For more details, see: