Is the Claim That Roasted Coffee Beans Contain Carcinogenic Substances a Myth? Is the Presence of Acrylamide in Roasted Coffee Legal?

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A foreign news report about "acrylamide" in Starbucks coffee potentially causing cancer has been widely circulated online. As early as 2014, the China Food and Drug Administration had already issued a risk warning regarding "Detection of Acrylamide in French Fries." So if food production operators are found to contain acrylamide during random inspections by food regulatory authorities, does this constitute illegal activity?

The author attempts to discuss from the perspective of the Food Safety Law and related standards, as well as provisions of the Consumer Rights Protection Law, whether the formation of acrylamide in coffee or other food production by food producers constitutes administrative illegality, and the applicable administrative penalties if administrative violations are involved.

I. Whether Coffee Containing Acrylamide Meets Food Safety Standards

Article 33 of the Food Safety Law stipulates that food production operations should comply with food safety standards and corresponding hygiene requirements. According to this provision, we need to first examine whether the food safety standards for coffee have restrictive or prohibitive provisions regarding acrylamide. In standard searches, we can find that China currently has not issued a national food safety standard for coffee.

Since acrylamide in coffee mainly exists in roasted coffee, we can continue to search for whether there are food safety standards for this category. Through searching, we can find that although there is no such national food safety standard, there is an industry standard for this type of product, namely the "Roasted Coffee" (NY/T605-2006) industry standard issued by the Ministry of Agriculture in February 2006. This standard was officially implemented on May 1, 2006.

According to the provisions in the "Reply on Issues Related to National Food Safety Standards" issued by the former China Food and Drug Administration in January 2016 in response to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine: "In accordance with the work deployment of the State Council, the National Health and Family Planning Commission is carrying out the work of cleaning up and integrating food standards. According to the coordination spirit of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on December 3, 2015, before the issuance and implementation of relevant national food safety standards, current quality and safety standards for edible agricultural products, food hygiene standards, food quality standards, and relevant food industry standards remain valid. Food production operations and their supervision and management should be implemented in accordance with current relevant standards." Based on this provision, the "Roasted Coffee" (NY/T605-2006) industry standard issued by the Ministry of Agriculture remains valid, and the production operations of roasted coffee and their identification management should be implemented in accordance with this standard.

By reviewing the "Roasted Coffee" (NY/T605-2006) industry standard, we can find that this standard does not impose any restrictive or prohibitive provisions on the content of acrylamide in this type of coffee. Based on this situation, we can only consult other relevant hygiene standards. Focusing on the concept of acrylamide itself, we searched food safety standards again and found a formal national food safety standard "National Food Safety Standard - Determination of Acrylamide in Food" (GB5009.204-2014). However, by reviewing this standard, we know that this national standard only specifies the determination method for acrylamide in food, but does not specify any limits on its content in food.

At this point, we can conclude that there is no legal basis to directly determine that the presence of acrylamide in coffee (especially roasted coffee) constitutes a violation of food safety standards by coffee production operators.

II. From the Perspective of Labeling Rules and Consumer Rights to Information, the Necessity of Labeling Carcinogenic Possibility

For pre-packaged foods, determining whether such coffee products should be labeled for the carcinogenic possibility of acrylamide should be implemented in accordance with the national standards for pre-packaged foods, namely "National Food Safety Standard - General Standard for the Labeling of Pre-packaged Foods" (GB7718-2011). This standard does not require production operators to provide special warnings on labels regarding the pathogenic risk of certain components in food.

Despite this, we still need to return to the basic perspective of consumer rights protection and re-examine the legality of this behavior. Article 8, Paragraph 1 of the Consumer Rights Protection Law regarding consumer rights to information stipulates: "Consumers have the right to know the true situation of the goods they purchase or use, or the services they receive." From the basic provisions of this article, there is indeed a need to label the carcinogenic possibility of acrylamide. However, Paragraph 2 of this article also stipulates: "Consumers have the right to request operators to provide information about the price, place of origin, producer, purpose, performance, specifications, grade, main ingredients, production date, expiration date, inspection certificate, instruction manual, after-sales service of the goods, or the content, specifications, fees, etc. of the services, according to the different circumstances of the goods or services."

Paragraph 2 of Article 8 of the Consumer Protection Law actually limits the scope of consumer rights to information. Even with this limitation, from the perspective of product purpose and performance, the author believes that acrylamide is not a food ingredient added during production. Consumers are not clearly aware that this substance is contained in food. This situation poses greater potential harm to consumers. In situations where legislation and related standards have not yet been clarified but the harmfulness of acrylamide is clear, both coffee products and other products containing acrylamide should clearly indicate to consumers the presence of this substance in their products. Although there is no exact standard basis for carcinogenic content, the lack of standard quantitative basis can only be a reason for food production operators to avoid labeling the content of this substance and its carcinogenic possibility, but cannot be a reason to conceal this dangerous substance from consumers.

From the perspective of strengthening food safety supervision, imposing this requirement on food production operators can better enable them to pay attention to harmful substances naturally formed during the production process, prompting operators to reduce or eliminate the content of harmful substances generated in this process in food to the greatest extent possible.

III. Application of Administrative Penalties for Failure to Label Acrylamide Content

From the perspective of legal application practice, the Food Safety Law does not directly mandate the labeling of potential harmfulness of certain substances. However, if there are other violations of laws and regulations, according to the provisions of Article 67 of the Food Safety Law, other legal provisions can also serve as the legal basis for regulating food labels. For example, in foods using food raw materials as ingredients, if there are restricted populations, the restricted populations should be clearly indicated on the food label according to the official approval documents publicized by the health department, otherwise it constitutes a situation of illegal labeling.

For the above reasons, if food production operators violate relevant provisions of the Consumer Rights Protection Law, and these provisions involve food labeling matters, food regulatory authorities can impose administrative penalties according to the provisions of Article 125 of the Food Safety Law. Of course, market supervision departments can also impose administrative penalties according to relevant provisions of the Consumer Rights Protection Law. It should be noted in law enforcement practice that according to the provisions of Article 24 of the Administrative Penalty Law: "A party shall not be subject to two or more fines for the same illegal act." With the advancement of government department reforms, this enforcement work will be uniformly handled by the merged market supervision departments, which can obviously better reduce or eliminate such illegal penalty risks.

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