USDA FAS GAIN Report CH2023-0040 (2023) — China releases GB 2762-2022 maximum levels of contaminants in foods (unofficial English translation)
GAIN Report CH2023-0040, prepared by FAS China Staff in Beijing and approved by Adam Branson on 20 March 2023, is the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service’s unofficial English translation of the National Food Safety Standard for Maximum Levels of Contaminants in Foods (GB 2762-2022). The Chinese standard was released on 30 June 2022 by the National Health Commission (NHC) and the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) and entered into force on 30 June 2023, replacing GB 2762-2017 (whose translation FAS published on 9 May 2018 as GAIN report CH18025). The report transcribes the standard’s foreword, scope, terms, principles of application, and Tables 1 through 12 of analyte-by-food-category maximum limits, plus Appendix A on food category definitions. Changes from the 2017 version are marked in red in the translated text. This source page anchors the GB 2762-2022 regulatory framework on the wiki via its USDA-translated text rather than the original Chinese; the active regulation page china-gb-2762-2022-contaminants is the routing target for downstream comparator references.
Key numbers
Limits below are reproduced from the USDA FAS unofficial translation. Values are in mg/kg unless otherwise noted; all values are on the as-placed-on-market basis for the food category named (e.g., powdered formula on powdered-product basis), with explicit basis flags preserved where the standard states them.
Lead (Table 1, sections 4.1.1–4.1.2; testing per GB 5009.12; packaged drinking water per GB 8538)
| Food category | Pb limit (mg/kg) |
|---|---|
| Grains and grain products (excl. cereal, gluten, assorted cereal porridge, wheat and rice products with fillings); paddy rice on brown-rice basis | 0.2 |
| Cereal, gluten, cereal porridge, wheat and rice products with fillings | 0.5 |
| Fresh vegetables (excl. brassica, leafy, leguminous, ginger, tuber) | 0.1 |
| Leafy vegetables | 0.3 |
| Brassica vegetables, leguminous vegetables, ginger, tuber vegetables | 0.2 |
| Vegetable products (excl. pickled, dried) | 0.3 |
| Pickled vegetables | 0.5 |
| Dried vegetables | 0.8 |
| Fresh fruit (excl. cranberries, gooseberries) | 0.1 |
| Cranberries, gooseberries | 0.2 |
| Fruit jam (puree) | 0.4 |
| Candied fruit | 0.8 |
| Dried fruit | 0.5 |
| Edible fungi (Button, oyster, shiitake, honey mushrooms) | 0.3 |
| Edible fungi (King bolete, matsutake, truffle, green-head, termite, chanterelle, lactarius) | 1.0 |
| Wood ear, silver mushroom products | 1.0 (dry weight basis) |
| Beans | 0.2 |
| Soy milk | 0.05 |
| Bean products (excl. soy milk) | 0.3 |
| Fresh algae (excl. spirulina) | 0.5 |
| Spirulina | 2.0 (dry weight basis) |
| Nuts and seeds (excl. raw and roasted coffee beans) | 0.2 |
| Raw and roasted coffee beans | 0.5 |
| Meats (excl. viscera) | 0.2 |
| Viscera of livestock and poultry | 0.5 |
| Meat products (excl. viscera products) | 0.3 |
| Fresh/frozen aquatic animal (excl. fish, crustaceans, bivalve shellfish) | 1.0 (viscera removed) |
| Fish, crustaceans | 0.5 |
| Bivalve shellfish | 1.5 |
| Aquatic products (excl. fish products and jellyfish products) | 1.0 |
| Fish products | 0.5 |
| Jellyfish products | 2.0 |
| Milk and milk products (excl. raw, pasteurized, sterilized, modified, fermented) | 0.2 |
| Raw milk, pasteurized milk, sterilized milk | 0.02 |
| Modified milk, fermented milk | 0.04 |
| Egg and egg products | 0.2 |
| Fat and fat products | 0.08 |
| Condiments (excl. spices) | 1.0 |
| Spices (excl. peppercorn, cassia bark/cinnamon, mixed spices) | 1.5 |
| Peppercorn, cassia bark (cinnamon), mixed spices | 3.0 |
| Sugar and starch sugar | 0.5 |
| Edible starch | 0.2 |
| Starch products | 0.5 |
| Baked foods | 0.5 |
| Beverages (excl. packaged drinking water, fruit/vegetable juice/pulp/beverages, milk-containing drinks, powdered drinks) | 0.3 |
| Packaged drinking water | 0.01 mg/L |
| Milk-containing drinks | 0.05 |
| Fruit and vegetable juice/pulp and beverages (excl. with berries/small pieces, concentrated juice) | 0.03 |
| Fruit and vegetable juice/pulp with berries or small pieces and beverages (excl. grape juice) | 0.05 |
| Grape juice | 0.04 |
| Concentrated fruit and vegetable juice/pulp | 0.5 |
| Powdered drinks | 1.0 |
| Alcoholic beverages (excl. Chinese baijiu, Chinese rice wine) | 0.2 |
| Chinese baijiu, Chinese rice wine | 0.5 |
| Cocoa products, chocolate and chocolate products and candies | 0.5 |
| Flavored ice, popsicle | 0.3 |
| Formula food for infants and young children | 0.08 (powdered product basis) |
| Supplementary foods for infants and young children | 0.2 |
| Formulas for special medical purposes — products for children over 10 years old | 0.5 (solid product basis) |
| Formulas for special medical purposes — products for children 1 to 10 years old | 0.15 (solid product basis) |
| Complementary food supplement | 0.5 |
| Sports nutrition — solid/semi-solid/powder | 0.5 |
| Sports nutrition — liquid | 0.05 |
| Nutrient supplementary foods for pregnant and lactating women | 0.5 |
| Jelly | 0.4 |
| Puffed foods | 0.5 |
| Tea | 5.0 |
| Dried chrysanthemum | 5.0 |
| Tea of broadleaf holly leaf | 2.0 |
| Honey | 0.5 |
| Pollen | 0.5 |
| Rapeseed pollen | 1.0 |
| Pine pollen | 1.5 |
A 2022 note (footnote c) explicitly states: “Limit values for liquid formula food for infants and children are converted with a ratio of 8:1.” This conversion factor is new vs. GB 2762-2017.
Cadmium (Table 2, sections 4.2.1–4.2.2; testing per GB 5009.15; packaged drinking water per GB 8538)
| Food category | Cd limit (mg/kg) |
|---|---|
| Grains (excl. paddy rice on brown-rice basis) | 0.1 |
| Milled grain products (excl. brown rice, rice powder) | 0.1 |
| Paddy rice (brown-rice basis), brown rice, rice (powder) | 0.2 |
| Fresh vegetables (excl. leafy, leguminous, root and tuber, stem, citron daylily) | 0.05 |
| Leafy vegetables | 0.2 |
| Leguminous, root and tuber, stem vegetables (excl. celery) | 0.1 |
| Celery, citron daylily | 0.2 |
| Fresh fruits | 0.05 |
| Fresh edible fungi (excl. shiitake, morel, shingled hedgehog, green-head, chanterelle, honey, matsutake, king bolete, termite, lactarius, truffle, himematsutake, wood ear, silver mushroom) | 0.2 |
| Shiitake mushroom and its products | 0.5 |
| Morel, shingled hedgehog, green-head, chanterelle, honey mushrooms and products | 0.6 |
| Matsutake, king bolete, termite, lactarius and products | 1.0 |
| Truffle, himematsutake and products | 2.0 |
| Wood ear, silver mushroom and products | 0.5 (dry basis) |
| Beans | 0.2 |
| Peanut | 0.5 |
| Meat (excl. viscera) | 0.1 |
| Liver of livestock and poultry | 0.5 |
| Kidney of livestock and poultry | 1.0 |
| Fresh, frozen fish | 0.1 |
| Crustaceans (excl. sea crab and mantis shrimp) | 0.5 |
| Sea crab and mantis shrimp | 3.0 |
| Bivalves, gastropods, cephalopods, echinoderms | 2.0 (viscera removed) |
| Canned fish | 0.2 |
| Other fish products | 0.1 |
| Eggs and egg products | 0.05 |
| Salt (condiment) | 0.5 |
| Fish condiment | 0.1 |
| Packaged drinking water (excl. natural mineral water) | 0.005 mg/L |
| Mineral water | 0.003 mg/L |
| Cereal-based complementary foods for infants and young children | 0.06 |
The 0.06 mg/kg Cd limit for cereal-based complementary foods for infants and young children is new in GB 2762-2022 vs. GB 2762-2017 (foreword bullet, “Modifies the limit requirements on cadmium in some foods”, and the Foods for Special Dietary Uses section appears in red in Table 2).
Mercury (Table 3, sections 4.3.1–4.3.2; testing per GB 5009.17; packaged natural mineral drinking water per GB 8538)
Two columns: total mercury (tHg) and methylmercury (MeHg). Em-dash means no relevant limit. Footnote a: for products with MeHg limits, tHg may be tested first; if tHg is below the MeHg limit, MeHg testing is not required.
| Food category | tHg (mg/kg) | MeHg (mg/kg) |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic animals and products (excl. carnivorous fishes) | — | 0.5 |
| Carnivorous fishes and products | — | 1.0 |
| Tuna and products | — | 1.2 |
| Alfonsino and products | — | 1.5 |
| Marlin and products | — | 1.7 |
| Shark and products | — | 1.6 |
| Grains: paddy rice on brown-rice basis, brown rice, rice powder, corn, corn flour, corn dreg (grit), wheat, wheat flour | 0.02 | — |
| Fresh vegetables | 0.01 | — |
| Edible fungi (excl. wood ear, silver mushroom) | 0.1 | — |
| Wood ear, silver mushroom products | 0.1 (dry basis) | — |
| Meats | 0.05 | — |
| Raw, pasteurized, sterilized, modified, fermented milk | 0.01 | — |
| Fresh egg | 0.05 | — |
| Salt | 0.1 | — |
| Drinking natural mineral water | 0.001 mg/L | — |
| Canned complementary foods for infants and young children | 0.02 | — |
Arsenic (Table 4, sections 4.4.1–4.4.2; testing per GB 5009.11; packaged drinking water per GB 8538)
Two columns: total arsenic (tAs) and inorganic arsenic (iAs). Em-dash means no relevant limit. Footnote b: for products with iAs limits, tAs may be tested first; if tAs is at or below the iAs limit, iAs testing is not required; otherwise iAs shall be tested.
| Food category | tAs (mg/kg) | iAs (mg/kg) |
|---|---|---|
| Grains (excl. paddy rice on brown-rice basis) | 0.5 | — |
| Paddy rice (brown-rice basis) | — | 0.35 |
| Milled grain products (excl. brown rice, rice powder) | 0.5 | — |
| Brown rice | — | 0.35 |
| Rice (powder) | — | 0.2 |
| Aquatic animal and products (excl. fish and fish products) | — | 0.5 |
| Fish and fish products | — | 0.1 |
| Fresh vegetables | 0.5 | — |
| Edible fungi (excl. matsutake, wood ear, silver mushroom) | — | 0.5 |
| Matsutake mushroom and products | — | 0.8 |
| Wood ear, silver mushroom products | — | 0.5 (dry basis) |
| Meat and meat products | 0.5 | — |
| Raw, pasteurized, sterilized, modified, fermented milk | 0.1 | — |
| Milk powder and modified milk powder | 0.5 | — |
| Fat and its products (excl. fish oil, krill oil products) | 0.1 | — |
| Fish oil and krill oil products | — | 0.1 |
| Condiment (excl. aquatic dressing, blended condiment, spices) | 0.5 | — |
| Aquatic dressing (excl. fish condiment) | — | 0.5 |
| Fish condiment | — | 0.1 |
| Mixed condiment | — | 0.1 |
| Sugar and starch sugar | 0.5 | — |
| Packaged drinking water | 0.01 mg/L | — |
| Cocoa products, chocolate and chocolate products | 0.5 | — |
| Cereal-based complementary foods for infants and young children (excl. products that add algae) | — | 0.2 |
| Cereal-based complementary foods that add algae | — | 0.3 |
| Canned complementary foods for infants and young children (excl. aquatic/animal liver products) | — | 0.1 |
| Canned complementary foods produced from aquatic products and animal liver | — | 0.3 |
| Complementary food supplement | 0.5 | — |
| Sports nutritional food — solid/semi-solid/powder | 0.5 | — |
| Sports nutritional food — liquid | 0.2 | — |
| Nutrient supplementary food for pregnant and lactating women | 0.5 | — |
Tin (Table 5, section 4.5; testing per GB 5009.16). Footnote a: limits apply only to foods packaged in containers of tinned plate sheet.
| Food category | Sn limit (mg/kg) |
|---|---|
| Foods (excl. beverages, formula for infants and young children, complementary foods for infants and young children) | 250 |
| Beverages | 150 |
| Formula for infants and young children; complementary foods for infants and young children | 50 |
Nickel (Table 6, section 4.6; testing per GB 5009.138)
| Food category | Ni limit (mg/kg) |
|---|---|
| Hydrogenated vegetable oil; products partly produced of hydrogenated vegetable oil and/or containing hydrogenated vegetable oil | 1.0 |
Chromium (Table 7, section 4.7; testing per GB 5009.123)
The standard measures total Cr (not Cr-VI speciation). Reported here as Cr.
| Food category | Cr limit (mg/kg) |
|---|---|
| Grains; milled grain products | 1.0 |
| Fresh vegetables | 0.5 |
| Beans | 1.0 |
| Meat and meat products | 1.0 |
| Aquatic animal and products | 2.0 |
| Raw, pasteurized, sterilized, modified, fermented milk | 0.3 |
| Milk powder and modified milk powder | 2.0 |
Non-metal contaminant tables (in scope of standard but not central to HMI corpus)
Tables 8 (nitrite/nitrate), 9 (benzo[a]pyrene), 10 (N-nitrosodimethylamine), 11 (polychlorinated biphenyl), and 12 (3-chloro-1,2-propanediol) are part of the standard but cover non-metal contaminants; values are not reproduced above. Notable infant/young-child-relevant rows from Table 8 include 2.0 mg/kg (NO₂ basis, powdered) and 100 mg/kg (NO₃ basis, powdered) for formula foods for infants, older infants, and young children, with the new 8:1 liquid:powder conversion ratio (footnote a in Table 8) mirroring the metals tables.
Methods (brief)
GAIN Report CH2023-0040 is a regulatory-translation document, not an analytical study; the FAS-Beijing staff prepared an unofficial English translation of the National Food Safety Standard GB 2762-2022 as released by the National Health Commission and SAMR on 30 June 2022 (entry-into-force 30 June 2023). The translation reproduces the standard’s foreword, scope, terms and definitions (“contaminant”, “edible part”, “limit”), principles of application, Tables 1 through 12 of analyte-by-food-category maximum levels, and Appendix A on food category definitions. Changes from GB 2762-2017 are marked in red throughout the translated text. The standard itself prescribes analytical testing methods by reference to other GB standards (GB 5009.12 for Pb, GB 5009.15 for Cd, GB 5009.17 for Hg, GB 5009.11 for As, GB 5009.16 for Sn, GB 5009.138 for Ni, GB 5009.123 for Cr; GB 8538 for packaged drinking water across all metals); no instrument vendors or reference materials are named in the FAS translation.
Limitations
- This source page reproduces selected metal-relevant limits from the FAS unofficial English translation, not from the authoritative Chinese-language original of GB 2762-2022. The FAS translation carries the FAS disclaimer that the report “contains assessments of commodity and trade issues made by USDA staff and not necessarily statements of official U.S. government policy” and that it is an “unofficial translation”. For citation in a regulatory or litigation context, the authoritative source is the Chinese-language standard issued by the National Health Commission and SAMR.
- The HMI-relevant metals (Pb, Cd, tHg, MeHg, tAs, iAs, Sn, Ni, Cr) are extracted in full above; the non-metal contaminant tables (nitrite, nitrate, benzo[a]pyrene, N-nitrosodimethylamine, polychlorinated biphenyl, 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol) are summarised only at the header level.
- The standard’s chromium limit is for total Cr (not Cr-VI speciation); the wiki metals abbreviation Cr is used and Cr-VI is not asserted.
- Limit values for liquid formula foods for infants and children are derived from the powdered-product limits using a stated 8:1 conversion ratio (new in GB 2762-2022); the liquid-basis equivalents are not separately tabulated in the standard and should be computed downstream when comparing to liquid-basis literature.
- Subsequent successor standard GB 2762-2025 has been published and is scheduled to take effect 2026-09-02 (per the regulation page china-gb-2762-2022-contaminants verification notes, after this source’s access date); GB 2762-2022 remains the active framework as of 2026-06-03.
Implications
- Certification: GB 2762-2022 is the active national Chinese regulatory ceiling for HMT&C-relevant metals across the food categories in scope; threshold-setting work targeting Chinese-market product categories should treat this standard as the China comparator under the china-gb-2762-2022-contaminants anchor.
- Courses: The standard exemplifies an omnibus single-document national framework that bundles maximum levels for nine metals (Pb, Cd, tHg, MeHg, tAs, iAs, Sn, Ni, Cr) plus non-metal contaminants into one regulation, a structurally different model than the EU’s Regulation 2023/915 (which also bundles) and the US fragmented per-commodity FDA action levels and Closer-to-Zero target framework.
- App: The infant-and-young-child rows (formula powder Pb 0.08; cereal-based complementary foods Cd 0.06, iAs 0.2 or 0.3 with algae; canned complementary foods Hg 0.02, iAs 0.1 or 0.3 with aquatic/animal liver) provide China-jurisdiction ceilings for the same product categories the app surfaces.
- Microbiome: Not addressed.
Verification notes
- Cite-key follows the agency-and-year pattern (
usda-fas2023-) with the suffixchina-gb-2762-2022-translationto make explicit that this source page is the USDA unofficial English translation of GB 2762-2022, distinct from the regulation page china-gb-2762-2022-contaminants which carries the routing metadata for the underlying Chinese standard. near_duplicateslists the non-”2”-suffixed sibling PDF in the same Manual Fetch Kimi/June 3 Folder; both files share SHA256c8bccdb20f30b3f6246b18167af26dab16b09cc639621e98c9c16294b76c10a7— flagged for downstream dedupe.- The active regulation page china-gb-2762-2022-contaminants was created 2026-05-18 ahead of this source-page ingest; this page is the underlying USDA-translation source it cites in its “Sources” section (“USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. China releases standard for maximum levels of contaminants in foods…”).
jurisdictions: [CN]because the standard is a Chinese-jurisdiction instrument; the USDA translation is the access surface, not a US-jurisdiction document.metals: [Pb, Cd, tHg, MeHg, tAs, iAs, Sn, Ni, Cr]matches the metal-bearing tables explicitly present in the standard. The standard separately distinguishes total vs. inorganic As and total vs. methyl Hg in Tables 3 and 4 (with the explicit speciation footnotes preserved above). Cr is asserted as total Cr, not Cr-VI, because Table 7 does not state speciation.ingredientsandproductspopulated from the in-taxonomy slugs whose pages correspond to food categories named with metal-specific limits in the standard. The broad coverage is intentional per CLAUDE.md Part 5b routing layer guidance — the routing audit fans broad scopes out to sibling pages.- License field set to
us-government-work-public-domainbecause the FAS GAIN report is a US-government work product (translation prepared by FAS China Staff and approved by Adam Branson); the underlying GB 2762-2022 standard is a Chinese-government instrument and its copyright status is separate from this translation. - No HMTc threshold proposals or comparisons are made on this page per CLAUDE.md Part 2; the wiki records what the regulation states, and any HMTc-side use of the values lives on the HMTc certification pages, not here.
- Audit subagent (2026-06-03) flagged
[[products/chocolate]]as not in the Products taxonomy snapshot (Check 2 ⚠️); verified against the snapshot at docs/gpt-collaboration/taxonomy-snapshot.md line 45 (Products list) —chocolateis present in the Products vocabulary andwiki/products/chocolate.mdexists. The audit subagent only inspected the Ingredients section of the snapshot, missing the Products-section occurrence. Finding was a false positive; no change applied. Checks 1, 3, 4, 5 all returned ✅ clean against the source PDF.
Wiki pages this source may touch
- lead
- cadmium
- mercury
- mercury-methyl
- mercury-total
- arsenic
- arsenic-inorganic
- arsenic-total
- tin
- nickel
- chromium
- china-gb-2762-2022-contaminants
- china-gb-2762-2017-contaminants-superseded
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1476f44 | 2026-06-09 | ingest: cacic2019-hemp-heavy-metals fresh from MFK/June 9 |