Exporting organic products to China
China does not recognise foreign organic certification. Your USDA, EU or JAS certificate has no legal effect here — the product must be certified again, to the Chinese standard, by a body China has approved.
1) Mandatory organic standards and labels
The standard is GB/T 19630, covering production, processing, labelling and management systems for organic products. The legal framework sits in the national certification and accreditation regulations, the Measures for the Administration of Organic Product Certification, and the Implementation Rules for Organic Product Certification, which were reissued and are now in their current edition.
The label is the China Organic Product mark (中国有机产品), which carries a unique organic code for each sales unit, verifiable on the public certification information system.
What may be called organic
Only product certified under the Chinese system. Any use of 有机 or organic, or any wording or graphic that could lead a consumer to think a product is organic, is barred without Chinese certification. Products must be at least 95% certified organic ingredients — there is no Chinese equivalent of a made with organic front-of-pack claim.
Product carrying only a foreign organic label must have that labelling physically covered when sold in China. A USDA seal or EU leaf on the pack, without Chinese certification, is a labelling violation rather than a selling point.
Check the catalogue first. Certification is only available for products listed in China's Organic Product Certification Catalogue. If your product category is not on it, the product cannot be certified at all, and no amount of preparation will change that.
2) Important voluntary standards and labels
- Green Food (绿色食品) — run by the China Green Food Development Center, with two grades. Historically better supported and more commercially visible in China than organic.
- Hazard-free / pollution-free agricultural products (无公害) — largely absorbed into the broader food and agricultural product certification system.
- Geographical indication marks, ChinaGAP and GLOBALG.A.P.
- Demeter — biodynamic, private, and requires an underlying organic certification.
In commercial practice, leading domestic brands pursue double or triple certification — Chinese plus EU, sometimes plus US — because the foreign marks carry marketing value even though they carry no legal organic status in China.
3) Approved certification and control bodies
This is the constraint that defines the market. China does not recognise foreign accreditation bodies — not USDA, not EU competent authorities, not IOAS — and does not accept foreign organic certificates. Certification must be issued by a CNCA-approved certification body assessing conformity with GB/T 19630.
The current rules raised the bar on those bodies: mandatory CNCA approval, in-house or contracted accredited testing capacity, separation of certification decision-making from inspection and consultancy, financial reserves or risk insurance, and digital traceability systems feeding a national supervision platform. Inspector rules tightened too, including a limit on how many consecutive years the same inspector may audit the same site.
Major Chinese bodies include COFCC, OFDC, CQC/CQM, CGC and FOFCC. Several international certifiers operate through CNCA-approved Chinese entities or joint ventures — but approval status changes, so verify current CNCA approval before contracting rather than relying on the certifier's own marketing.
- CNCA — www.cnca.gov.cn
- Certificate lookup — cx.cnca.cn
- Food and agricultural product certification information system — food.cnca.cn
4) Import requirements
Getting certified
A full application to a CNCA-approved body, typically requiring three years of production and processing history, a GB/T 19630-compliant management system operated for a minimum period before application, environmental monitoring reports for soil, water, air and the processing environment, annual production and sales reconciliation, and on-site inspection of the overseas site. Sampling and testing are mandatory and prohibited substances must be non-detectable. Where quarantine rules prevent testing in China, an overseas third-party laboratory may be used.
Eligibility screens
Applicants are excluded where a certificate was revoked in recent years for false information, prohibited substances, scope abuse or a major food safety incident, and where the operator appears on national corporate credit platforms as seriously dishonest.
On top of the organic requirements
The general food import machinery applies: GACC overseas facility registration, importer and exporter filing, Chinese-language labelling, and entry inspection. The facility registration decree is being replaced by a successor instrument adding risk-based registration types and bringing cold storage into scope — check the current position for your facility type.
Equivalence
Only New Zealand has a mutual recognition arrangement with China. China and Australia signed a letter of intent on cooperation in organic certification, but it has not become a formal arrangement. For every other origin, re-certification is the only route.
Supervision after certification
At least one on-site inspection a year, plus unannounced inspections across a proportion of certified entities annually — with a higher rate and mandatory sampling for entities that hold certification but do not use the organic logo. Certificates issued under the previous rules are not grandfathered.
5) Further information
- CNCAThe Certification and Accreditation Administration; approves certification bodies and publishes the implementation rules.
- China food and agricultural product certification systemVerify a certificate or an organic code; the public check a Chinese buyer will run.
- National certification and accreditation information platformCertificate lookup across the Chinese conformity assessment system.
- Global Organic Trade Guide — ChinaTrade-oriented overview of certifier lists and import restrictions.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-06