Guidelines on the Food Adulteration (Metallic Contamination) (Amendment) Regulation 2018

Overview

The Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety (CFS) published these Guidelines in 2019 to support trade compliance with the Food Adulteration (Metallic Contamination) (Amendment) Regulation 2018, which was enacted by the Legislative Council in October 2018 and came into operation on 1 November 2019 for fresh food and on 1 November 2020 for all other food. The Amendment Regulation increases the number of regulated metallic contaminants from 7 to 14 (adding barium, boron, copper, manganese, nickel, selenium, and uranium to the existing antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and tin) and increases the number of maximum levels (MLs) from 19 to 144 across food groups. The document is the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN Report HK1922 (Caroline Yuen, prepared; Alicia Hernandez, approved; 20 May 2019) which relays the CFS Guidelines verbatim and adds a short USDA-side highlight summary.

The Guidelines themselves are interpretive rather than tabular: they cover the Amendment Regulation’s purpose, definitions, hierarchy of food groupings (Annex I), the rules for applying MLs to dried/dehydrated/concentrated foods and to compounded foods, sample-portion conventions adopted from Codex, and a Chapter 3 FAQ section. The 144-row Schedule of MLs is referenced as Part 2 of the Schedule to the Amendment Regulation but is not reproduced in full within this PDF; representative extracts (antimony across six food groups; cadmium in rice, leafy vegetables, oyster, and worked examples; lead across produce/seafood/meat, in dried apricot, and in concentrated orange juice; methylmercury in predatory fish) appear in the body text.

Key numbers

Scope of the Amendment Regulation:

• Metals regulated: 14 (up from 7). The seven previously regulated are antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and tin; the seven added are barium, boron, copper, manganese, nickel, selenium, and uranium. Column 1 of Part 2 of the Schedule lists 17 entries because arsenic is split into total arsenic and inorganic arsenic and mercury is split into methylmercury, total mercury, and inorganic mercury.
• Maximum levels: 144 (up from 19) for the 14 metals across different food / food groups.
• Penalties: maximum fine HKD 50,000 and six months’ imprisonment for importing, consigning, delivering, manufacturing, or selling any specified food or compounded food containing a specified metal in excess of the ML, or any food containing any metal in an amount dangerous or prejudicial to health.

Effective dates:

• Enacted: October 2018.
• Commencement (fresh food, per Regulation 7): 1 November 2019.
• Commencement (all other food): 1 November 2020.
• Grace period: 1 November 2019 to 31 October 2020 (12 months) for non-fresh food that complied with the pre-Amendment maximum permitted concentrations.

Highlights extracted in the GAIN Report body (USDA-side summary):

The Cd-in-polished-rice ML is lower than the Codex level of 0.4 mg/kg but more lax than the prior Hong Kong level of 0.1 mg/kg; the Cd-in-leafy-vegetables ML aligns with the Codex standard of 0.2 mg/kg but is more lax than the prior Hong Kong level of 0.1 mg/kg. The MeHg-in-predatory-fish ML of 0.5 mg/kg is more stringent than the Codex standard of 1 mg/kg. The lead reduction from a single previous level of 6 mg/kg to category-specific levels ranging from 0.05 to 1.5 mg/kg adheres to the Codex standard.

Antimony Schedule extract (Part 2, Figure 1 of the Guidelines):

Conversion factor for dried, dehydrated, or concentrated forms (Regulation 3(2)(b)):

The ML in a dried, dehydrated, or concentrated form is proportionally adjusted according to the change in metal concentration caused by the process. Worked example (Section 2.11, Example 1, cadmium in dried oyster):

• ML of cadmium in oyster (bivalve molluscs) = 2 mg/kg (fresh-basis ML from the Schedule).
• Water content of fresh oyster = 79.2 to 87.1% (footnote 2: jointly cited to the ASEAN Food Composition Database (Electronic version 1, February 2014), the China Food Composition (Book 1, 2nd Edition), and the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration Food Nutrients & Composition Database).
• Water content of dried oyster sample = 13.1% (laboratory result for the sample).
• Adjusted ML of cadmium in dried oyster = (100% − 13.1%) / (100% − 87.1% to 79.2%) × 2 mg/kg = 8.4 to 13.5 mg/kg.
• “In other words, the cadmium content of the dried oyster sample concerned shall not exceed 13.5 mg/kg.”

Worked example (Section 2.11, Example 2, lead in 10× concentrated orange juice):

• ML of lead in orange juice (fruit juices, other than fruit juices exclusively from berries and other small fruits) = 0.03 mg/kg.
• Concentration factor: 10×.
• Adjusted ML of lead in concentrated orange juice = 0.03 × 10 = 0.3 mg/kg.

Compounded food rule (Regulation 3(4)):

If all ingredients of a compounded food are specified foods, the ML of a specified metal in the compounded food is the sum of the ingredient MLs multiplied by the ingredient proportions by weight. Worked example (Section 2.15, Example 1, cadmium in mixed vegetable salad with 30% sliced cucumber, 50% romaine lettuce, 20% shredded carrot):

• ML of cadmium in cucumber (fruiting vegetables, Cucurbits) = 0.05 mg/kg.
• ML of cadmium in romaine lettuce (leafy vegetables, including Brassica leafy vegetables) = 0.2 mg/kg.
• ML of cadmium in carrot (root and tuber vegetables) = 0.1 mg/kg.
• Adjusted ML = 0.05 × 30% + 0.2 × 50% + 0.1 × 20% = 0.135 mg/kg.

Worked example (Section 2.15, Example 2, lead in dried apricot with sulphur dioxide preservative):

• ML of lead in apricot (fruits, other than cranberry, currants, and elderberry) = 0.1 mg/kg.
• Sulphur dioxide is not considered an ingredient under Regulation 3 because it is used as an additive.
• The lead content of the dried apricot sample is compared against the 0.1 mg/kg ML for apricot with application of the appropriate water-content conversion factor (Section 2.13).

Hierarchy of food groupings (Annex I):

• Cereals: cereal grains (rice, wheat, maize, etc.); husked and polished rice (milled cereal products, early milling stages); wheat flour and maize flour (cereal grain milling fractions); others (wheat bran, wheat wholemeal, rye flour, etc.).
• Fruits: berries and other small fruits (cranberry, currants, elderberry, etc.); citrus fruits; pome fruits; stone fruits; assorted tropical and sub-tropical fruits — edible peel; assorted tropical and sub-tropical fruits — inedible peel.
• Vegetables: bulb vegetables; Brassica vegetables, other than Brassica leafy vegetables; fruiting vegetables, Cucurbits; fruiting vegetables, other than Cucurbits; leafy vegetables (including Brassica leafy vegetables); legume vegetables; pulses; root and tuber vegetables; stalk and stem vegetables; edible fungi; vegetables unless otherwise specified (cadmium only: applies to edible fungi and tomato).
• Aquatic animals: fish; bivalve molluscs (oyster, mussel, scallop, cockle, etc.); cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus, squid, etc.); crustaceans (crab, prawn, shrimp, lobster, mantis shrimp, bay lobster, crayfish, etc.); gastropods (abalone, conch, etc.); others (sea cucumber, sea urchin, etc.).

Codex sample-portion conventions adopted (Table 1, Section 2.20): the ML applies to and is analysed in defined edible portions (e.g., berries — whole commodity after removal of caps and stems; pome fruits — whole commodity after removal of stems; stone fruits/dates/olives — whole commodity after removal of stems and stones with the level expressed on the whole commodity without stem; pineapple — whole commodity after removal of crown; potato — peeled potato; head cabbages — whole commodity as marketed after removal of decomposed or withered leaves; cauliflower and broccoli — flower heads only).

Risk-assessment provision (Section 2.16, Regulation 3AA): for food / food groups without relevant MLs under the Amendment Regulation, CFS continues to conduct risk assessment to determine whether the food contains the metal concerned in an amount dangerous or prejudicial to health. Section 54 of the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance (Cap. 132) requires that all food for sale in Hong Kong be fit for human consumption.

Methylmercury screening permission (Section 9 FAQ): for MLs expressed as methylmercury, the trade may screen by analysing total mercury. If total mercury ≤ the methylmercury ML, no further testing is required and the sample is deemed compliant. If total mercury > the methylmercury ML, further testing is necessary to determine methylmercury specifically. The same principle is permitted for inorganic arsenic screening against total arsenic.

Methods (brief)

Not an analytical study. The Guidelines describe Hong Kong’s regulatory framework for metallic contamination in food and provide interpretive rules for applying MLs. The underlying methodological basis cited in the Guidelines (Section 2.18) is JECFA’s evaluations of metallic contaminants and the health-based guidance values (HBGVs) JECFA has established. CFS draws on JECFA assessments, Codex Alimentarius Commission MLs (adopted unless otherwise specified), and domestic risk assessment data from the Hong Kong Population-based Food Consumption Survey (2005–2007; the Second Survey commenced April 2018) and from the Hong Kong Total Diet Study series. Sample-portion conventions and food classifications follow Codex (CAC/MISC 4-1993, Codex Classification of Foods and Animal Feeds, Second Edition, with 2012 fruit and 2017 vegetable revisions not yet incorporated in the Guidelines’ classification document).

Laboratory testing methods are not prescribed by the regulation. CFS notes (FAQ Question 9) that laboratories may develop testing methods by reference to international or national technical criteria and reference testing methods, and that further guidance for inorganic arsenic and methylmercury determination is available on the CFS and Government Laboratory (GL) websites. The sampling level for surveillance is via the Food Surveillance Programme at import, wholesale, and retail.

Implications

For the wiki regulations layer, this document is one of two anchor citations for any wiki claim about Hong Kong’s current metallic-contaminant regulatory framework: it gives the regulation’s effective dates, the 14-metal/144-ML scope, the compounded-food and dried-food adjustment rules, the methylmercury-by-total-mercury screening permission, and the antimony Schedule extract. The full 144-row Schedule itself lives in the Amendment Regulation (Cap. 132V sub. leg.) which is the authoritative ML source; the Guidelines reproduce only a subset of rows in worked examples. Any wiki page that claims a specific HK ML for a metal-in-food pair should cite the underlying regulation, not this Guidelines document, except where the worked examples here are the only place the rule’s interpretation is explicit (dried-oyster proportional adjustment; mixed-salad weighted-average compounded ML; concentrated-juice multiplication).

For courses: a worked example of how a jurisdiction can adopt Codex MLs as a baseline while diverging tighter (methylmercury in predatory fish at 0.5 mg/kg vs Codex 1 mg/kg) or more lax (cadmium in polished rice at 0.2 mg/kg vs the predecessor HK 0.1 mg/kg) on a case-specific risk-assessment basis. The compounded-food weighted-average rule is a pedagogically useful contrast to single-ingredient ML enforcement.

For the app: this source supplies regulatory ML inputs, not occurrence concentration data, and is not suitable for the contamination_profile per-cell occurrence format. App use would be limited to “Hong Kong currently regulates this metal in this food group at this ML” lookup statements derived from the underlying Schedule.

Related evidence

• Antimony
• Arsenic
• Arsenic, Inorganic
• Arsenic, Total
• Barium
• Cadmium
• Chromium
• Copper
• Lead
• Manganese
• Mercury
• Methylmercury
• Mercury, Total
• Nickel
• Tin
• Uranium
• Cereals
• Rice
• Vegetables
• Leafy Vegetables
• fruits
• Fish
• Seafood
• Shellfish
• Molluscs
• Meat and poultry
• Eggs
• Milk and Dairy
• Fruit Juice
• Fish — marine, predatory (tuna, swordfish, shark, king mackerel)
• Fish — marine, non-predatory (sardines, anchovies, salmon, cod)
• Canned Fish — REDIRECT (Cat 6 → canned-seafood)
• Canned Vegetables — REDIRECT (Cat 7 sub-variant of Canned foods, general)
• Canned Fruit — REDIRECT (Cat 7 sub-variant of Canned foods, general)
• Rice (white, brown, wild — bulk grain)
• Fruit Juices, Non-Apple

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git.