From Nov. 1, 2023 onwards, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) will be removing melamine-related requirements for milk, milk products, and products containing milk that are imported from China.

However, these products will still be subject to SFA checks and must still comply with other import requirements.

2008 requirements to be scrapped following SFA's review

In an Oct. 23, 2023 press release, SFA announced that the requirements will be scrapped following the agency's review.

What was the 2008 Chinese milk scandal?

The melamine-related requirements were put in place in 2008 following the Chinese milk scandal from the same year.

Milk, milk products and products containing milk were found tainted with melamine, a chemical rich in nitrogen that is used to make plastic dinnerware.

When ingested, the melamine-contaminated milk and associated products resulted in kidney stones and other kidney damage.

As a result of ingesting melamine-contaminated milk, six babies in China died while 54,000 out of the 300,000 affected children that were identified had been hospitalised.

Melamine-related requirements put in place in response

Following the incident, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) suspended the import and sale of all milk and milk products from China from Sep. 19, 2008.

AVA was later disbanded into other statutory boards, such as SFA, in 2019.

Additionally, melamine-related requirements on milk, milk products, and products containing milk imported from China were put in place from Dec. 18, 2008 onwards.

The imports are required to meet the following conditions:

• The products must be produced by establishments approved for export by the Chinese

  authorities;

• The manufacturers are required to test each batch of their raw materials and end products to

  ensure that they are not contaminated with melamine; and

• The Chinese authorities must inspect and test each batch of the products and issue health

  certificates with the results of melamine tests to accompany consignments exported to Singapore.

Scrapped from Nov. 1, 2023 due to China's strengthened measures

These requirements will be scrapped from Nov. 1, 2023, SFA said.

"Since [the 2008 milk incident], China implemented various measures to strengthen the supervision and administrative processes of their dairy products, including tighter production licensing, stronger inspection, detection, monitoring and evaluation, and more severe penalties for products found with melamine across the dairy food chain (i.e., from breeding of dairy cattle, purchase and transport of fresh and raw milk to dairy processing establishments)."

That said, milk and milk products imported from China will continue to be subjected to SFA’s checks and must comply with other existing import requirements.

SFA said: "Please contact www.sfa.gov.sg/feedback should you have further enquiries on the import of milk and milk products from China."

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