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On August 13, the Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety (CFS) confirmed to ATO Hong Kong that effective February 14, 2025, the Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will transition from a “systems-based” approach to recognizing foreign meat and poultry establishments to an “establishment or plant-based” registration system.

This report provides guidelines on Hong Kong’s food import regulations.

Hong Kong does not have any certification changes for food imports since the last report submitted in July 2023. This report lists the certificates required by the Hong Kong Government (HKG) for U.S. agricultural and food exports to Hong Kong. Certificate samples are included in the appendix.

The Hong Kong government maintains a Food Incident Surveillance System (FISS) to monitor and proactively respond to foreign food incidents that could impact food products entering Hong Kong. In 2021, the CFS detected around 2,200 food incidents from the FISS.

On April 6, the Hong Kong government announced that during precautionary testing at the point of import, the packaging sample of a Brazilian offal shipment tested positive for the COVID-19 virus.

The Hong Kong government notified the World Trade Organization that it adjusted the ban on commercial imports of live rodents and lagomorphs to cover only commercial imports of live hamsters effective on April 1, 2022. In 2021, Hong Kong’s global imports of small mammals grew 14 percent to $2.5 million.